The consequences of kicking Russia off the internet outweigh any benefits.
The Ukrainian government has called upon the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to remove Russian domains from the web amid its ongoing invasion of the country.
ICANN — the global internet domain not-for-profit — confirmed it had received a written submission from the Ukrainian government calling for Russia to effectively be booted off the internet, but offered no insight on whether it will actually happen.
“We can confirm that we’ve received the letter and are reviewing it,” an ICANN spokesperson told CNBC. “We have no further comment at this time.”
According to Rolling Stone, the Ukrainian government called for ICANN to “revoke domains issued in Russia and shut down primary Domain Name System servers in the country, a move that would effectively bar access to Russian internet sites, with the potential for knocking the entire country offline.”
While kicking the entire country off the internet would be an extremely powerful move that would have a devastating impact on Russia’s economy, it is unlikely that we will see this happen — and that’s probably for the best.
There are obvious benefits of turning off the internet tap right now — namely — putting pressure on Putin to call a ceasefire and leave Ukraine. However, the proposal isn’t all positive.
Why Booting Russia Off The Internet Could Be A Bad Thing
As the name suggests, the world wide web is meant to be a tool that is accessible to all (provided you have a smart device and an internet connection, of course). And as our society progresses further into a digital age, it is a vital part of the world’s economy and essentially the backbone of society as we know it.
The idea that one organisation — like ICANN — can wield the power to kick an entire nation off the internet is something to be wary of. It’s easy to support the concept when the discussion is regarding a corrupt leader invading its neighbouring country and threatening nuclear warfare, but once an organisation starts dictating who can and can’t use the internet (which is an entirely different question than who can and can’t use a specific platform, like Twitter or Facebook), it becomes a very fraught area.
There is no doubt that what Vladimir Putin is doing is wrong, but if organisations like ICANN start dictating internet access, it is hard to determine where exactly the line should be drawn. If — for example — ICANN was to ban countries with histories of human rights violations, it would run the risk of further silencing the voices of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, who use the internet to advocate for change and ask for help fighting the battles in their own backyards.
Russia is no stranger to internet censorship as it is, but by cutting off the country from the internet as the rest of the world knows it, it would cut off any vital lifeline for Russian civilians to access unbiased information, international news or resources. Instead, they would be left with nothing but state-controlled media as their source of information.
Any decision to drastically reduce a nation’s access to the internet is something that should be thoroughly scrutinised. Not to mention, ICANN — which quite literally uses the slogan “one world, one internet” — is not the internet police, and makes a huge point of noting that.
A World With Two Internets
Another major issue we could see unfold if ICANN decides to cut Russia off from the internet as we know it currently is the possibility of living in a world with two internets.
This is a hypothesis first predicted by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — who suggested one internet would be led by the US, while an entirely separate internet would be run by China — back in 2018.
In 2019, Russia passed its “sovereign internet law”, which was a major step in the direction away from the world wide web and towards a state-controlled server that would give the government full control over what you see and how you see it.
While the Kremlin asserted that the law is a security measure to protect Russia from a cyber attack, in reality, it essentially allows the country to run an internet that is completely independent of the world wide web. To put it simply, the laws passed in 2019 gave the government the power to run all web traffic through its own state-controlled infrastructure, essentially censoring how Russians view the internet.
“The ‘sovereign internet’ law purports to provide a legal basis for mass surveillance and allows the government to effectively enforce online existing legislation that undermines freedom of expression and privacy,” Human Rights Watch said in a blog post at the time.
If ICANN did decide to kick Russia off the internet, it would serve as a massive incentive for Russia — as well as other countries with censored internet — to distance themselves from the world wide web in favour of their own micro-internets.
Not only is this bad for the civilians in said countries and their access to unbiased information and resources, but it’s also just not very good for the world — and the internet — as we know it.
And the reality is, it won’t just be countries with heavy censorship that gravitate away from the world wide web. If this starts, there could be a snowball effect that threatens to shatter the whole “worldwide” part of the world wide web.
