Decree number 60 is not binding for official websites?
- 11.02.2010, 11:23
It looks as if norms of the decree about censorship on the Internet should apply only to oppositional websites.
As Electroname.com website informs, long before and especially zealously after signing the Decree #60, the Belarusian state-run press, foam at the mouth, told about establishing order on the Web and the bright future after this order is imposed. One on the main rationales of the necessity to bring discipline into the Belarusian Internet was a desire to make bloggers and other anonymous writers to respect author’s rights and at least define a hyperlink to the original text. It is logical to suppose that agitators and propagandists would give us a lead in putting into practice Lukashenka’s orders.
Everyone who is not a freshman in work with content projects, know a situation when a beginner gets into the Internet and make first steps posting texts at a website. Their knowledge of HTML is out of question, and it is good when a CMS administration console has a visual editor. More than one year should pass for a person to start defining necessary hyperlinks easily and correctly. Besides, the process of publication is distributed, and it is not clear at which stage this hyperlink should appear in the text. That is why such a strict requirement of the Decree about hyperlinks to original sources cannot draw anything but smile. These people should start with a school course of HTML basics.
But let us return to examples and see the “showcase” of law and order in the informational space of Belarus, the website of the Information Ministry. The website has a newsfeed of copy-paste news called “Publications”, where articles from the Belarusian press which are considered interesting by the editor are collected. Well? There is no such a notion as hyperlink there at all. It does not matter whether CMS of the website does not allow inserting HTML into the text, or the editor cannot do that. And they are the people who are to see after observation of the law. Then let us be coherent and block the violator of the Decree before July 1 as a preventive measure.
Another example: recently everybody follows the reports of mass media about the situation with the Polish House in Ivyanets. Let us read today’s “Sovetskaya Belorussia”. It is simply hilarious. Better than a cipher officer, the author exchanges quotes and kicks in the teeth with anonymous interlocutors who are kept in the shade. Interlocutors are so anonymous that we can guess who they are only thanks to stolen quotes. Let us leave behind the scenes what is happening in the heads of the target audience of the newspaper in some province towns like Lelchytsy. But where are hyperlinks to primary sources of information? Or has a salaried propagandist decided that the Decree does not concern this newspaper?
There is an impression that the norms of the Decree should apply only to us, ordinary internet users, and “loyal” journalists and state servants do not fall under it. Then it should have been written in the decree itself, and make an exception officially, and not to tell tales about “barriers” and blocks to pirates.