
Belarus Makes Browsing Foreign Websites a Misdemeanor - anigbrowl
http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/servlet/lloc_news?disp3_l205402929_text
======
hippich
Title is quite wrong. In both cases there is _civil_ offense. Here are two
main cases:

\- Belarusian companies have to offer service from servers located in Belarus
physically.

\- Owners of internet-cafe have to identify all users so any connection could
be tied to particular identity anytime.

I am not saying this is right, but for country like Belarus it is quite minor
issue. I was almost excluded from university due my participation in
opposition movement and know a bit about wire tapping phone lines (including
mobile - have no clue how they do it actually).

I am glad it did to front page of HN. It means someone still bother what is
going on there.. :)

~~~
goshakkk
Yeah, living in Belarus and participating in opposition movement, they told me
at school that they're able to report about my political views (yeah, we're
not free about that in Belarus) and exclude me.

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masklinn
From my reading, the title seems to be a mis-representation:

* Scratch that, the text notes a misdemeanor, is there no way to strike text on HN? ~~The offense is entirely civil, not criminal.~~

* Belarusians registered as entrepreneurs (individuals or companies) _must_ provide their service to belarusians from a belarusian domain.

* Owners of internet cafés or other places providing internet access _must_ restrict their access to belarusian domains _or_ identify, record and report any access to a non-belarusian domain to the authorities.

* The law includes a provision for government-ordered blocking of banned websites by ISPs.

The note linked _does not_ seem to specify any offense by citizens not
registered as entrepreneurs and not business owners, although the second
paragraph may hint at information missing from this note:

> The newly published Law imposes restrictions on visiting and/or using
> foreign websites by Belarusian citizens and residents. Under this new Law,
> the violation of these rules is recognized as a misdemeanor and is punished
> by fines of varied amounts, up to the equivalent of US$125. (Id.)

(immediately following this paragraph is the section on entrepreneurs in point
1)

As I can not read Belarusian, I can not assert the correctness of the english
note linked or which informations are missing, I'm interested in corrections
or more complete informations from native speakers.

edit: I seem to have missed a section of the second paragraph which, while it
does not make the title any more correct, makes the law even more worrying:
foreign internet use would not be a civil offense for belarusian citizens but
_being a foreign service used by belarusians in business contexts would be_ :

> It appears that business requests from Belarus cannot be served over the
> Internet if the service provider is using online services located outside of
> the country.

~~~
BarsMonster
I only add that "Owners of internet cafés or other places providing internet
access must restrict their access to belarusian domains" is a complete lye.
Cafes are only recording IDs of users, and that's it. So, noone would be able
to conduct crime onlime from public internet. This article is yet another
piece of stupid propaganda we already used to from the 'democratic' countries.

~~~
goshakkk
OK, I see you're from Belarus too, like me. Yeah cafes are recording only ID
but they will get banned if they do not restrict access to the internet.

> Административное взыскание в виде штрафа (в размере от 5 до 15 базовых
> величин) может налагаться на должностных лиц пунктов коллективного
> пользования интернет-услугами (компьютерные клубы, интернет-кафе, домашние
> сети и иные места, в которых обеспечивается коллективный доступ
> пользователей интернет-услуг к сети Интернет) при нарушении законодательных
> актов об идентификации абонентских устройств и пользователей, по учету и
> хранению сведений о них, а также об оказанных интернет-услугах.

BTW, as of your 'propaganda'. Do you think our gov't has ever been fair at
least for 1 second? They violate their own laws, they violate our rights,
c'mon.

~~~
tomjen3
Considering your feelings and how you feel about uttering them online, have
you considered getting the fuck out of there?

Get to European soil and ask for asylum. It is not much, but at least it is
better than Belarus.

~~~
goshakkk
Yeah, I wanna get out of there as soon as possible. To US, Canada, Australia,
Germany, or even Poland. The heck is I'm only 15 and can't move myself; my
parents appear to be OK in here.

Anyway I will not spend even a day here after I'm 18. I gonna work for some
cool startup also.

~~~
strlen
I'm from Belarus myself, moved to United States when I was 13 with my family.

Be careful though, to immigrate to the United States on an H1 (work visa), you
need a university degree. I'd suggest either trying to immigrate to Europe
(any EU country) and getting a degree there, getting a degree in Belarus, or
perhaps going to the United States as a foreign student.

[Edit: s/college/university/ -- college is an American term. My fifth grade
English teacher in Belarus must be angry at me for forgetting Queen's English
that I was taught :-)]

------
goshakkk
That's how my country got to the top of Hacker News.

------
ohashi
Can anyone explain why they implemented this law for those of us with little-
no knowledge of Belorussian politics?

~~~
tomjen3
Basically the cold war never ended for Belarus. It is the last dictatorship in
Europe, the secret police is still called the KGB and they very much oppress
their citizens.

It is not as closed as North Korea, but it also isn't exactly the kinda place
where you would go vacationing.

There has been no indication of an Arab Spring situation, but there have been
a few widely reported protests (and oppression of the people involved) they
may just be widely reported because they were done by women with no tops.

As for why they do this? Because if you are a dictator and want to stay that
way, you avoid and control everything that can challenge your power.

~~~
guard-of-terra
One should also remember that Belarus was the least affected by the collapse
or USSR, consistently maintaining the best social and economic conditions: the
biggest effective gdp/person after oil-rich Russia, gini, education reach,
smallest child mortality, best life span among cis countries.

Even while it's a small country with no mineral resources, bad climate and no
love from the West.

This is going to change, tho, because it was hit hard by the recession and
clumsily moving central bank; money inflated 3x in the last year.

~~~
ajuc
> the biggest effective gdp/person after oil-rich Russia

I assume you mean among countries that was part of USSR? Not exactly:

Estonia 18,527 Lithuania 17,235 Russia 15,612 Latvia 14,504 Belarus 13,874

Not to mention countries that have been soviet sattelites like Hungary
(18,841), Poland (18,981), or Czech Republic (24,950).

To be fair Belarus could still do much worse - for example like Ukraine
(6,698).

Data from
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita#cite_note-2)

~~~
guard-of-terra
I mean among CIS countries. Baltic states are different thing.

Russia has much bigger GINI which offsets the difference.

------
guard-of-terra
The title is outright lying in action. The law being cited only talks about
civil offences. Didn't see anything about criminal offence.

The law in question seems to be vague, stupid and prone to interpretations,
but that doesn't make lying right.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Second lie: the cited law says nothing about individuals being liable. It
says, that if you sell or provide services in belarus then your hardware
should be located there.

The problem is, of course, that everything is a service. webmail? service.
wikipedia? service! or not? interpretation.

And also that cloud hosting is pervasive yet becomes useless. It's stupid but
still you should not lie.

~~~
anigbrowl
_The Law states that this provision may apply to private individuals if they
allow other persons to use their home computers for browsing the Internet._

I can't read Russian, but a machine-translated version of the official notice
(linked in the article) also mentions home use.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Can you provide a quote that caught your eye? I'll try to figure it out.

~~~
anigbrowl
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpravo.by%2Fmain.aspx%3Fguid%3D71393)

 _Administrative penalty of a fine (ranging from 5 to 15 basic units) may be
imposed on officials of the centers for collective use of the web services
(computer clubs, Internet cafes, home networking,_

~~~
guard-of-terra
As already stated, this means commercial home networks. They deliver
connectivity via Ethernet, colllect fees and are subject to regulations. It
doesn't mean your house LAN unless you provide paid service to unrelated
people.

------
guard-of-terra
Another twist: Belarus has implemented a huge economic and customs union with
Russia and Kazakhstan starting 1st january.

I wonder if they are bound to let Russian internet firms operate on
Belarussian market unconstrained by any local laws; therefore giving them even
more advantage.

Of course this is pure speculation; we do not know if they are going to
enforce this law at all.

------
viraptor
I have a strange feeling that actually implementing this globally would be the
easiest way to reverse the law. There has to be a large number of government
agencies which rely on 'foreign' internet for many reasons. This would pretty
much paralyse a lot of the country for some days...

Also... How many security patches are obtained from foreign servers?

~~~
ajuc
In countries where you can go to jail for being an oppositionist law only
applies to people gov wants it to.

No problem with prohibiting something to the general population and still
using it when it's convenient for the rulling class.

~~~
goshakkk
You're way too right. But wait, don't you live in Poland?

~~~
ajuc
Yeah, but here we know about that because 22 years ago we had authoritharian
government too.

BTW - Poland tries to do sth about Lukashenko (like sponsoring "Radio Free
Bellarusia", and promising more trade and loans if he will be less opressive
towards opposition). But I don't know if it works at all.

And knowing how government enterprises works in Poland, Radio Free Bellarusia
probably suck :)

------
ishi
OMG. Just when you think you've heard the worst (SOPA?).

The discussion going on about whether it's a criminal or civil offense is
really pointless. The main thing is that a country can simply decide one
morning that it's illegal to access websites from other countries. Thinking
about this as a possible reality makes me feel physically ill. Not to mention
how stupid this idea is in the first place: many modern professions rely
heavily on international websites for doing their jobs. Think about academic
researchers, importers/exporters, even school teachers...

Horrible, just horrible.

------
tantalor
If they want to limit network access why don't they just prohibit routing at
the ISP level? They could set up VPN for authorized foreign network access.

~~~
goshakkk
Because they wanna get people paying bans.

------
gadders
Oh, man. I only just bought a .by Belarus domain six months ago (as a vanity
domain, my surname ends in 'by'). I hope it doesn't effect that.

~~~
botker
Several years ago I was prepared to _purchase_ ¹ swear.by so I could use
foo.to.swear.by for a variety of foo. After receiving a printed application
from the government of Belarus, I decided to quickly educate myself about life
there. I'm glad I did. It made me decide not to get the domain name. I
couldn't give that government any money in good conscience.

I know it hurts to let a domain name go, especially if you're using it, but I
urge you not to renew. That government doesn't deserve our money.

¹Let's face it, _rent_ is the correct term.

~~~
guard-of-terra
_Life_ there is probably better than in any other CIS state, on average (or it
was before the recession). _Freedom_ is another question but the answer
depends on your definition of that.

Anyone who was happy with .ly should be happy with .by

------
perfunctory
The only reason this law wasn't initiated earlier is because until recently
very few people in Belarus had access to internet, so the regime could leave
it alone and boast internet freedoms as oppose to China let's say. Now that
the internet usage is growing rapidly it became important to control it.

------
xxqs
this will simply push the use of encrypted tunnels to a new level. It's
already a commodity service in China.

~~~
ypcx
And when are encrypted tunnels getting banned? Individuals responsible for
this kind of oppression need to be tried at international court for crimes
against humanity.

~~~
xxqs
you can't ban encrypted tunnels if there is any kind of global connectivity.

you can put an encrypted tunnel into a connection which looks quite ordinary.

~~~
pferde
No connection will look "ordinary" in this context if one of its endpoints is
outside Belarus, while the other one is inside.

