OREANDA-NEWS.    Vladimir Putin took part in the Internet Entrepreneurship in Russia Forum, organised by the Internet Initiatives Development Fund.
During the Forum representatives of the Russian internet business community and investment funds discussed the sector’s development as well as cooperation between the authorities, funds and entrepreneurs aimed at establishing the internet industry as a separate significant branch of the national economy.

Before his meeting with Forum participants, the President viewed the City of Startups exposition, which presents achievements in the implementation of projects selected for further support by the Internet Initiatives Development Fund in 2013.

Excerpts from transcript of the meeting with participants of the Internet Entrepreneurship in Russia Forum

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon,

I would prefer to hear you speak about your work and the progress you are making so that my colleagues and I could respond to your proposals as quickly as possible.

About a year ago, we set up the Fund, which was supposed to support internet start-up projects. I have to say that we began this work ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Russian internet – I believe it turned 20 in April. Over the years, the internet in this country has turned from a means of communication into a very profitable business. I am sure you know this, but I would like to remind you nevertheless that it accounts for 8.5 percent of GDP. The markets that are in one way or another involved in internet business account for over 5 trillion rubles, 5.2 trillion to be exact [USD 150 billion].  This is a large and very interesting business environment.

Moreover, government bodies are increasingly using the internet in the process of governance. Only recently part of the Civic Chamber members were elected on of the internet. To a large extent the Presidential Human Rights Council was formed using the internet. This is a very serious and interesting development.

We would very much like the Russian state to support those who can, want and intend to work on the internet. This is exactly why we set up this Fund, which today manages significant resources – around 6 billion rubles. I would like this money to be used efficiently, so that it multiplies as the project develops to benefit the economy and both society in general and the people who are actively working on the internet.

This is all I wanted to say to open this discussion. I would very much like to hear about your wishes, opinions and plans.

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VLADIMIR PUTIN: As for computer engineers, quite recently (I am sure you have heard a lot about this) we had a discussion dealing with the fact that we do not train good engineers in general, not to mention computer engineers. This is undoubtedly a very pragmatic task, and I agree that we have a good study base, and wonderful human resources, which all make it possible to work and to achieve success.

You spoke of a certain mission; you said only three or four countries have their own search engines, and the countries that do have them have a special mission. I hope you will agree with me that the experiment will work only if each one of these missionaries has pure sovereignty. As you see, if there is one owner behind all four, this is not a mission any more, but a monopoly, and a monopoly is good only if you have it, while generally it is not a good thing.

Thus, our mission is to help you, help our national segment and the people who work in this very promising sphere to become independent, if not from the viewpoint of the state and society, then at least in terms of their ability to express their views and to formulate them in the way they find necessary. Whenever this happens on a national basis, this always benefits the state.

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VLADIMIR PUTIN: (about internet regulations) You cannot do without any regulation at all. That is why we have laws: to regulate relations within society.

A legal norm is not just a piece of paper with some text. The idea of any legal norm is in regulating public relations. These public relations take shape on the internet on a very large scale.

In one way or another, about a third of our citizens go online every day. This definitely needs to be regulated somehow.

We have had extensive discussions of the limitations that were introduced on propaganda of paedophilia, drugs, terrorism or suicide. Look, we are all adults, what do we need this for? Let us spare our children. The other thing is that we should not use this as a cover for any other limitations that have to do with human rights, the rights of citizens that come first in our Constitution, and we cannot introduce anything that would run counter to the interests of a free market, I mean the large volumes of business.

However, we should also listen to your competitors, to those who work in the electronic media and know the cost of advertising in the country. Laws exist to balance these interests. I would simply like to assure you that the state, from which you seem to be trying to hide, is not interested in any way in acting in the interests of one part of society against the other. On the contrary, we would like to bring harmony into our relations. This is the only way we can develop. This is exactly what we are interested in and we will undoubtedly make every effort to assist you in your businesses, so you make progress at home and win over new markets – in a good sense of this word. We will provide you with every assistance in this.

As for programmers, I fully agree with you that we have the best. Our people are best at everything, I am certain, and especially at programming. I often meet with foreign businessmen – though not as often as I would like – including those working in this sector, and I have heard them say this on numerous occasions. For instance, in India they have good programmers too. However, my friends tell me this: when we have to solve some grand, massive, large-scale task, we take programmers from India, but when we are facing some unique, very specific task, we look for Russian programmers. This is what I hear from people who are absolutely independent, who have large businesses in this sphere. I am always happy to hear such things.

Our task is to maintain this high level. This means we have to maintain a high level of teaching at school, especially mathematics. Here we still have things we need to work on.