Results of the Internet conference "Internet – Censorship – Youth"
22.03.06
Internet conference “Internet – Censorship – Youth” took place on March 20, 2006 in the Federation Council within the framework of the final program of the III International Festival of Non-Commercial Internet Projects.
The Federation Council was represented in the conference by deputy chairman of the Committee on Youth and Sports Affairs Igor Pushkarev and head of the Committee secretariat Natalia Parshikova. The following persons delivered a speech on behalf of public associations: Director of Extreme Journalism Center Oleg Panfilov, representative of the Glasnost Protection Fund Victor Monakhov, coordinator of the interregional group “Rights Protection Network“ Sergei Smirnov, chairman of the Russian Webmasters Union Alexei Dudinov.
Virtual participants could ask those present their questions and express their opinion on-line on the website of the Russian Webmasters Union www.webmastera.org. Thus, Irina Khakamada was a virtual participant in the conference.
The Internet audience of the conference totaled some thousand people during the broadcasting.
Conference participants expressed their concern about the existing censorship in mass media and governmental attempts to enforce it in the Internet.
The outcome of the dialogue between representatives of the authorities and the public was the following proposals to lawmakers:
- to define Internet as a self-regulating environment, which belongs to no state whatsoever;
- to apply provisions of the current legislation to Internet activities in terms of unlawful acts with flat rejection of any censorship of information even under the pretence of antiterrorism protection;
- to provide tax relief to business organizations that support non-commercial projects, primarily youth organizations.
Network communities were suggested to be the future of the Internet. It was suggested to develop the Festival of Non-Commercial Internet Projects as a self-controlled community. Due to the festival its participants can communicate, share their experience and promote their own non-commercial projects focused on solution of social problems and improving the civil society.
More than 2000 projects took part in the III festival, half of them being represented by participants from 70 countries from all over the world.
Since 2003 the festival is run by the Russian Webmasters Union. The Federation Council Committee on Youth and Sports Affairs provides continuing support to the festival. The general Internet partner of the festival – the @Mail.ru Holding. Permanent partners are: the Russian Union Youth, the Kaspersky Laboratory, other public and commercial organizations.