Vladimir Putin Wants His Own Internet (bloomberg.com)

A bill that's progressing through Russia's legislature could grant local authorities deeper control over internet access. The so-called "Sovereign Internet" bill seeks to set up a centralized hub officials can use to manage the flow of information in the nation. From a report: Putin is touting the initiative as a defensive response to the Trump Administration's new cyber strategy, which permits offensive measures against Russia and other designated adversaries. But industry insiders, security experts and even senior officials say political upheaval is the bigger concern. "This law isn't about foreign threats, or banning Facebook and Google, which Russia can already do legally," said Andrei Soldatov, author of "The Red Web: The Kremlin's Wars on the Internet" and co-founder of Agentura.ru, a site that tracks the security services. "It's about being able to cut off certain types of traffic in certain areas during times of civil unrest."

Comments

Good (but not really)

[DogDude]

My initial reaction is: "good!" It seems like the vast majority of the attacks/spam/garbage on the Internet comes from Russia, and has since the Net hit the public at large back int he early 90's

Of course, this (and what China is doing) pretty much destroy the entire point of the Internet. It'd be good (for me) in the short term, but bad for humanity as a whole, of course.

Re:France's Minitel is for sale

[PolygamousRanchKid]

May be all Russia can afford.

Why do they need their own Internet?

From comments here, I thought they already p0wned this one.

Re:France's Minitel is for sale

[DickBreath]

Russia may already pwn the current intarwebs, and that may be the very reason they want their very own intarweb tubes -- to protect from retaliation.

Definition of Universe.

[RyanFenton]

Warning: Linguistics and philosophy.

If you connect your network to the internet, it is part of the internet. That's what the internet is. It's the network between networks.

What he wants is not an internet, but a national intranet - well, unless he never connects it in any way to the rest of the world - then and only then would it be its own internet.

It's sort of like the definition of observable universe. If you can observe something, it is part of the universe. That's the whole 'Uni' part of universe - just one bucket to put things. So, if there's a gateway to some new place you can walk to/from - then you didn't open a gateway to another universe, you made the universe larger by opening that door. Connecting to our universe inherently joins the two spaces into once cross-observable space, even if you put protections and limitations in place.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Definition of Universe.

[whoever57]

If you are going to discuss linguistics relating to what is the Internet, then you should capitalize it properly ("Internet").

Re:Definition of Universe.

[steveha]

If you can observe something, it is part of the universe.

I think of it as: anyplace that a photon could travel to in the normal way that photons travel would be part of our universe.

People have posited the existence of other universes. It would require some unknown method of travel to go from one universe to another. The collection of all universes can be called the Multiverse.

I recently saw, in a comic, the idea that there could then be multiple Multiverses. That doesn't make sense to me any more than the idea of multiple Internets.

I read a web comic called Unicorn Jelly that really gave me some food for thought. How could you visit another universe where the physical laws are different? Only two ways: either you would have to travel in a little bubble where your usual physical laws apply somehow, or else you would have to be translated into the new universe. The Universe of Unicorn Jelly isn't made out of atoms, it's made out of "tratoms", and in order to visit you would have to have your body translated into tratoms. In principle there could be an infinite number of universes with different physical laws, and only in a tiny fraction of them would people survive the translation necessary to enter a universe. Luckily the universe of Unicorn Jelly is one where people can survive, or else there wouldn't have been a comic.

P.S. Unicorn Jelly, in the beginning, seems like a slightly silly and harmless story. It's a bigger story than it first appears, and I don't want to spoil it, but I will say that it is a story that could only be told in the universe in which it is set. The very nature of the Universe of the story drives the plot! So, the story of Unicorn Jelly meets my personal standard for science fiction: the story wouldn't be the same if you took away the science (fictional science, here).

P.P.S. If you like Unicorn Jelly and want more multiversal craziness from the same author, the follow-on story To Save Her is kinda set in the same universe. I mean, it's actually set in an infinite number of variations of the same universe, and features a somewhat infinite cast of characters, but we follow along a half-dozen or so through their story arc, as they visit about a half-dozen alternate universes. (They only visit alternates of their own universe, where the physical laws are the same.)

Re: Does that mean he gets his own goatse?

[ClickOnThis]

And can we ship APK to PutiNet?

How about Cyberia? [badum-*tish*]

He is concerned about election hacking

[Anonymous Coward]

Putin is likely concerned that a foreign agent might interfere with his elections, skewing the results, reducing his victory from 95% to 94%

Fine. Get an axe.

[Rick Schumann]

If that's the way they want to do things, then fine; get an axe, and chop all the lines connecting Russia. Isolate them. Problem solved.