Ukraine to create a registry of banned websites
On July 8, the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC) decided to establish a registry of banned websites. This was announced by Maksym Tulyev, a board member of the Internet Association of Ukraine.
‘Today at the NSDC a final decision was taken to create the very Ukrkomnadzor, which we teased each other about in jest and which seemed absolutely impossible in Ukraine a year ago,’ he wrote.
Maksym Tulyev joined the working group on the technical implementation of the registry. The expert plans to halt the project development, though he concedes that ‘the odds are slim’.
‘The registry, unlike individual decisions, is something that scales very quickly. You can bring in half of the internet at once,’ he added.
According to him, the political decision to create the registry уже принято. The working group will begin full operations on Monday, 12 July.
In a ForkLog interview Maksym Tulyev stated that the NSDC decision was dictated by market demand.
‘Major players wanted the creation of a single registry to make it easier for them.’
Currently, providers rely on decisions from disparate sources – courts and the NSDC.
‘In effect, they are supposed to officially deliver their decisions to each of the more than 7,000 Ukrainian providers. The decisions do not reach them; some providers challenge them in courts, some sabotage — as a result, the effectiveness of blockades remains low. The registry will fix this,’ commented Tulyev.
Recently the NSDC has significantly expanded its powers, turning from a council into a regulator, argues Artem Afyan, managing partner at Juscutum.
‘The necessity of following the Roskomnadzor path in Ukraine can have many arguments, including war and the like. But I would prefer that the Ukrainian government act through courts and through proper decisions within the framework of criminal cases,’ he told ForkLog.
Afyan noted that creating a separate registry signals distrust of Ukrainian court decisions.
‘For lawyers, this implies a lack of a normal practice for analysing which sites should be blocked and which should not. The controlling functions should remain with supervisory bodies, not with the NSDC,’ the expert said.
ForkLog requested comments from NSDC representatives, but did not receive a prompt response.
As a reminder, in February the Kyiv Holosiivskyi Court постановил заблокировать доступ к ForkLog и еще 425 сайтам. Later, by order of the procedural head of the criminal case, the case was closed, and the seizure of intellectual property rights was cancelled.
The Prosecutor’s Office is conducting an internal investigation into the incident.
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