UPDATE: RAEC says Web news engines to close if equal to mass media

(Changes headline, lead, adds paragraphs 2, 3,7)

MOSCOW, Feb 25 (PRIME) -- The adoption of a bill, submitted to Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, which seeks to equate online news aggregators to mass media will force them to close that will reduce competition in Internet, the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) said Thursday in a statement.

“RAEC calls for prolongation of the state course at support of a ‘stimulating’ law in the IT industry in opposition to a ‘protective-forbidding’ one and hopes for dialogue between all parties concerned to find a consensus on the matter,” RAEC said.

“In view of the industry’s experts, a gross interference into algorithms of work of services of news aggregation, such as an actual order to pre-moderate hundreds of thousands of materials, which are automatically processed by such services, will threaten principles of their work, whose creation had consumed enormous intellectual and time resources.”

The Kommersant daily reported earlier on Thursday that the State Duma had received for consideration amendments to a law on information, which will make big search engines and mass media equal and cap foreign ownership in them by 20%.

The Communications and Mass Media Ministry opposed the bill. “We haven’t seen the bill; we haven’t received it, and we don’t like the idea,” Deputy Minister Alexei Volin said.

The bill’s authors held no consultations with the ministry. “We think that if the idea reaches its logical end, newspaper kiosks could also be made equal to mass media. We see in kiosks’ windows covers of newspapers and magazines and can read headlines. Look like news aggregators, don’t they?” Volin said.

RAEC said that the 20% limit in foreign ownership will close an access for young companies to investments and for big companies to shareholders’ capital, which in the conditions of contracting contributions makes existence of such projects impossible.

End