The Belarusian hosting providers addressed collectively to the Ministry of Communications and information, and also to the Intelligence and Analysis Center (IAC) under the president of Belarus. The address is about application of Alexander Lukashenko's decree № 60 of the Internet and the Ministerial council decision № 644. The hosting providers urged to annul the requirement to transfer the servers in Belarus.
Besides, the Belarusian hosting providers proposed in the collective address to lower the prices for the external traffic to Central European level, to allow the Belarusian hosting providers to service the physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus, on the equipment which was physically abroad, Belarusian news inform.
Besides, the Belarusian hosting providers set up in the collective address to the Ministry of Communications and IAC some others proposals with the arguments to them. Also the Belarusian hosting providers urged to prolong term of registration of the Internet resources till October, 1st, 2010. The hosting providers, servicing more than 80 % of the Belarusian sites, put their names to the address.
The collective address of the Belarusian hosting providers.
At the conference «Bynet 2.4» on June, 2nd, 2010 the representatives of the Ministry of Communications Pavel Petrulevich, the deputy chief of the telecommunication department of the Ministry of Communications, and Sergei Rudnev, the chief of the information technology sector of the infrastructure and information development board of the Department of information of the Ministry of Communications, proposed to the Internet society to make, being coordinated by the largest hosting providers, a collective address about application of the presidential decree № 60 of the Internet and the Ministerial council decision № 644. Generalizing the offers, we got from all the interested persons, we, the hosting providers and coordinators of the address, we have tried to summarize them in a small list of the measures realisation of which, in our opinion, will allow to reach the purposes proclaimed in the Decree of the President of Belarus № 60 and to avoid the negative for the hosting services sector consequences which can arise as a result of existing treatment of application of the Decree № 60. We understand, that not all our questions and offers are in the competence of the Ministry of Communications, however we hope that our position will be studied, and that all the interested departments participating in working out of the Decree № 60 application order will acquainted with our proposals.
We propose:
1. To lower the prices for the external traffic on the Central European level and to annul the requirement for legal bodies and individual businessmen, who are the residents of Belarus, to place the information resources only on the equipment which is physically on the territory of Belarus.
The analysis of information resources, i.e. sites traffic distribution of the placed on territory of Belarus, testifies that only half of all traffic used by these sites fall on the users who are within the territory of our country. Hence, moving of all the sites of the legal bodies and the individual businessmen, who are the residents of Belarus, on the equipment physically placed in Belarus, won’t cause a decrease in consumption of the foreign traffic on a national scale.
It is also necessary to notice that the majority of Belarusian legal bodies uses the services of virtual hosting of Belarusian hosting provider. The reasons of this are following:
— Economic feasibility. The Cost of bank remittance to foreign suppliers of hosting services is comparable with annual cost of virtual hosting of the Belarusian hosting providers.
— Complexity of documentary registration. Almost every foreign hosting provider works under the contracts of the public offer. However the Belarusian legislation demands from legal bodies, who are the residents of Belarus, to sign a written contract with the non-resident.
— Interdiction for advance payment. Almost every foreign hosting provider works on the terms of advance payment which under the current legislation is impossible for the majority of the Belarusian companies.
The main reason, on which the part of the sites belonging to the residents of Belarus, is still on the equipment, physically placed outside of Belarus, is much higher cost of the foreign traffic in Belarus in comparison with the countries of the western Europe. Sincet the enterprises always aspire to place their sites as closer as possible to their potential consumers, the compelled choice of foreign platform is often connected with this factor.
Therefore we are absolutely sure that the main condition for voluntary moving of the sites on the territory of our country for the majority of our compatriots is comprehensible cost of foreign traffic. If it is up to the standard of Central European indicators, additional legislative measures to move the sites on Belarusian territory are unnecessary. At the same time, the imposed territorial restrictions on sites placing will cause impossibility to use many of the newest Internet technologies. That in turn will negatively affect quality of the services provided by the Belarusian hosting providers. And this contradicts directly the main objectives of the Decree № 60, which are improvement of quality of Internet-services.
2. To allow to the Belarusian hosting providers, as a prime measure, to service physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus, on the equipment which is physically abroad.
According to the existing treatment of the Decree of President №60 application order, Belarusian hosting providers have no right to service the sites of physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus, on the equipment placed outside of our country. At the same time it is authorised to physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus, to place the sites on the equipment which is outside of Belarus, i.e. at the foreign hosting providers. There is paradoxical situation, since in this case it is authorised to Belarusian physical persons to use foreign Internet-services and it is forbidden to use domestic Internet-services.
In this case we find infringement of the rights of home producers. After all physical persons who objectively feel requirement to place their sites on the equipment which is outside of Belarus lose possibility to use the services of domestic hosting providers.
We consider that the decision will cause a number of negative consequences, namely:
a) Outflow of currency will considerably increase from the country. It can be explained in the following way: The expenses for services of virtual hosting expenses on the equipment make smaller part of all the expenses of the enterprise. Hence, renting the equipment abroad and placing there the sites of our compatriots, we leave in our country the largest part of the money, which our clients pay for hosting services. We pay taxes, and the workplaces are created on them, they are invested in industry development, equipment purchase. Thus, depriving the Belarusian hosting providers of the possibility to satisfy requirements of the Belarus consumers (here the physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus), we voluntary give part of our market to foreign competitors and increase outflow of currency from the country. In this case we will get result opposite to the planned.
b) The possibilities of the law enforcement bodies of our country to solve the crimes in high technologies sector concerning our compatriots sites, placed abroad, will be reduced. Our law enforcement bodies will have to address to the enterprises of the foreign states to get any information, for example, to get log file for web server access. And it won’t be easy to get.
3. To replace registration of the sites by hosting providers’ duty to have all the information specified in the Ministerial council decision № 644.
The information on a site, which hosting providers should submit at the sites registration, supervising bodies of our country can receive as required, usually, on a day of the require. And why are those enormous expenditures of labour, suffered by each participant of the process, necessary? Hosting providers will increase the industrial costs by gathering, registration and constant actualization of data on sites. The state will also suffer extra expenses. And, hence, the efficiency of economy in this sector will fall.
It is necessary to notice also that the increase of hosting providers industrial expenses in any way doesn’t help to solve one of the Decree issue № 60, i.e. Internet-services reduction in price.
It is possible to assume, of course, that in exchange law enforcement bodies will have an opportunity to reacte more operatively to the crimes committed in Internet. But to solve such crimes they should equally address to hosting providers for the log files of web servers. Hence, fast access to the information submitted at the sites registration, won’t reduce expenditures of labour of the law enforcement officers. So it won’t save them necessity to address to the hosting-providers in writting. And the hosting-provider can hand all the data, required by the low enforcement bodies, with the data listed in the Ministerial council decree № 644.
Internet providers urge to annul the requirement to transfer the servers in Belarus
The Belarusian hosting providers addressed collectively to the Ministry of Communications and information, and also to the Intelligence and Analysis Center (IAC) under the president of Belarus. The address is about application of Alexander Lukashenko’s decree № 60 of the Internet and the Ministerial council decision № 644. The hosting providers urged to annul the requirement to transfer the servers in Belarus.
Besides, it is clear that the registering organization BelSTI has now no possibility to register in a short time all Belarusian sites. And they are not less than 30000. It can be proved by the fact that there were no software for mass line registration of the sites on June, 3rd, 2010. And it is necessary for large hosting providers. The web interface on manual data input, offered by BelSTI, is low efficient and it doesn’t allow to register all the serviced sites till deadline. Besides, even this interface doesn’t allow to realise all the issues specified in decision №644. So, for example, on June, 3rd, 2010 it didn’t allow to change the registered information.
Summarizing our arguments we consider that the registration of the sites, in the way offered in the Ministerial council decision № 644, is inefficient and it blocks realization of the Decree of the President № 60.
4. If there are any hidden and extremely important reasons to register the sites, we propose to allow hosting providers to render the clients hosting services to place their sites before registration. The providers should be obliged to hand the data on the site in the registering organisation within a month from the moment of the service beginning.
Now the registering organisation has the right to consider the demand for registration within 15 days and has 5 days more to answer. That is the client can start to use the site only in 20 days after application! Now almost every hosting providers in the world render the clients the hosting service in a day or even in a moment of address. Waiting for a service within 20 days will strongly worsen quality of the service in comparison with existing service of the Belarusian hosting providers. Besides, it will make strong negative impact on quality of the business environment in our country. For example, urgent start of promo-site to the international exhibition can become impossible because of huge terms of waiting for registration. For the same reason physical persons, who are the residents of Belarus, having the right to place the sites at the foreign hosting providers , will prefer their services.
Domestic hosting providers will again be artificially put in noncompetitive position relative to the western colleagues.
5. To cancel number of fields in the form of registration.
We consider that providing of some data on site is inconvenient low informative. At the same time, maintenance of these data urgency in registration database will cause unfairly big expenditures of labour.
In particular, we propose to exclude from the list of the information, which is subject to registration, the following data:
Column 4.7 Name of state structure, other state organisation, which carried out the state registration, date of the state registration and decision number.
We propose to write in this column only registration number of the payer, which is unique and allows to unequivocally identify the supplier of Internet-services or the proprietor of the Internet resource.
Column 5.1. Contract expiry date.
The hosting-provider is obliged to specify date of the contract start and to notify on the termination of use of site. The contract expiry date closed is, thus, the duplicating information. If notices on the termination of the site use don’t arrive, it means, that the contract operates or has been prolonged. Maintenance of data urgency of the contract expiry date will cause additional costs of the enterprise because of regular updating of this information after each prolongation of the contract. Besides, practically all the contracts on hosting are termless.
Column 5.2. The data about the entitlement of the legal person or businessman on the given resources.
The majority of our clients won’t be able documentary confirm their title to the site and its content. That’s we will have to provide the necessary data according to the clients words. Therefore the value of this information seems to be doubtful.
Column 6.1. The resource description.
BelSTI gave an example of the site description, such as «the official site». But we consider this information, as well as «personal site» or «promo-site» low informative. If it is necessary to specify the site content, it will be necessary to provide a great amount of the information and to staticize it at each site updating. And it will cause huge and unproductive industrial costs in the scale of a whole client base.
Column 6.5. Type of the hosting used by resource.
In our opinion the information has only marketing value and can’t service other purposes. Besides, on the technical point of view, placing of any site can always be characterized as any type of hosting. So, for example, the virtual hosting is often organized inside VPS, and VPS itself is placed in the allocated server. Unclearness of the definitions, so far, brings to naught value of the information written in this column.
Column 6.6. Ports of transport protocols of the open systems model of interaction of used by the resource.
We consider it is necessary to provide possibility to specify «All» for the cases when the user of service can establish himself the software on server (for example, for the allocated server). In this case, it is obvious that the client uses all IP-address himself, therefore the instructions of each concrete port aren’t meaningful.
6. To postpone term of registration of the sites to October, 1st
Whereas the list of the information which is subject to registration, constantly varies, and registering organisation BelSTI hasn’t provided yet the software to register and update great amounts of the data for large hosting providers, we consider that the registration of all Belarusian sites till July, 1st, 2010 is technically impossible.
The hosting providers, servicing more than 80 % of the Belarusian sites, put their names to the address.
Extmedia Ltd. Co (extmedia.by); Hoster By Ltd. Co (hoster.by); Active technologies Ltd. Co (active.by); Absolute Internet Systems (otriks.com); Beros Ltd. Co (support.by); Trymaj (eHost.by); KasperSystems Ltd. Co (kasper.by); IVA consulting group Ltd. Co (vashsite.by); Ermakov R. V (hb.by); Shikholaj A.P. (dreamhost.by); Prykin A.I. (desiderio.by).
