Bulgaria tangles with the Web
By Peter Kanev Posted Wed, Sep 1 1999
Almost 10 years after they witnessed the fall of communism and just two years after they bid farewell to the ruling ex-Communists, Bulgarians might be heading back toward authoritarian state control – this time over the Internet, pending a final Supreme Court decision.
The Balkan country of eight million people, once regarded as the Silicon Valley of the socialist camp, has steadily introduced and employed new technology. While Bulgaria’s neighbors settled their differences with arms and blood, computers were becoming ubiquitous in Bulgarian universities, government institutions and private homes. In Sofia, the country’s capital, more than a dozen Internet Service Providers do business now, and about 120 more operate in other big cities. Through them, thousands of users dial into cyberspace every hour. The industry has grown briskly in a country rife with high-quality programmers notorious for designing dreadful computer viruses like “The Dark Avenger” a decade ago. Now, foreign investors like George Soros put the programmers’ skills to more constructive use, such as solving the millennium-bug problem.
Seemingly, this picture leaves little room for worry. But for months local Internet buffs have warned of the government’s intentions to place the Bulgarian Internet under its control.
By executive order last December, Bulgaria’s Committee of Posts and Telecommunications, a ministry-level government agency, stated that local ISPs should become subject to general licensing. The proposed statutes require that ISPs apply for operators’ licenses and pay fees to the CPT. The statutes also require providers to hire expensive direct lines to the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company, the state-owned telecom monopolist, despite the fact that less-expensive satellite connections with the rest of the world already exist.
Days after the order was made public, the Bulgarian Internet Society, which is known as ISOC, sounded the alarm. The tiny nongovernmental organization has launched a prolific Web site called “Hands off the Net” (www.isoc.bg/kpd), where it details its suspicions and opposition to the government’s intentions.
The ISOC believes the CPT, in its attempt to pass off licensing as registration, is misleading providers into believing they need only inform the government of their activities, rather than submit to government control. CPT officials initially said that no content control would be exercised, that licensing was intended as a barrier to hacker attacks and would minimize consumers’ costs. Similar licensing, they offered, was in effect in the European Union, which Bulgaria aspires to join.
The same government officials who made the promises soon retracted them. Antoni Slavinski, chief executive of the CPT, said that Internet content should be scrutinized for illegal activities, including racist appeals, child pornography and terrorist training. “We have thought, that in the beginning, there could be some very general restrictions,” he says.
Bulgarian Internet users promptly denounced that proposal, charging that it would bring Bulgaria closer to the less-than-democratic Internet clubs of China, Singapore and Russia. In Russia, the FSB, successor to the KGB, demanded that every ISP allow the authorities access to and control of their servers’ content.
Slavinski’s comments added to fears that Bulgaria’s government is really after tighter control over local Internet access and content, combined with an opportunity to help fill the state coffers. Licenses are a threat because they can be rejected at government officials’ whim, the ISOC warns. Mario Tagarinski, minister of the state administration, envisions a “tame” Internet. In his opinion, the site www.bulgaria.com should not be “used by, say, a few young people, interested in sex.” Local press expressed fears that the government’s plans for the Internet are further proof of its ultimate goal, to control the media as a whole. Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Ivan Kostov recently announced that he would give no more press conferences because the questions he was asked about the economy showed a “lack of respect.”
A promise made by state officials, which pundits find laughable, is that licensing would protect Bulgarian users from hacker attacks. The ISOC points out that most of these attacks come from abroad and no licensing can stop them. In proof of that, and as a protest against licensing, swarms of Bulgarian hackers spammed the CPT and the telecom’s servers with millions of junk e-mail messages for a week in February. A CPT representative dismissed the attack as toothless, but he also said that licensing fees would be either symbolic or nonexistent.
Bulgarian Internet buffs find it hard to believe that licensing would benefit user access. Local users pay about as much as their U.S. counterparts for service, though the time to access the Internet in Bulgaria is more than in the United States. Due to Bulgaria’s location, providers are forced to use expensive satellite links. ISOC members say the proposed compulsory direct links to the state telecom body would be used only during peak hours and at 3 to 4 percent of their capacity at best. The ISOC suggests, tongue in cheek, that the only way that licensing could cut the costs and enhance the quality of Internet access would be if the phone company foots most of the bill for faster access to its satellite connections via the envisioned required links.
Such a move seems highly unlikely. Thus the promise that licensing would prevent consumer costs from rising rings hollow. A muffled admission by the CPT that prices would go up a mere 2.3 percent met with ISOC derision. The newly required direct links to the state telecom body would cost local ISPs an additional 25 percent of their current expenses. The license fee is thought to be a percentage of the ISPs’ turnover and to inflate the prices accordingly. In Bul-garia, those who are lucky enough to be employed earn an average of US$100 a month. Even a US$5 increase in the current US$20 per month rate for individual Internet access would be cost-prohibitive for many users.
The ISOC predicts that ISPs will also have to cover certain costs that will never appear on their balance sheets. Mitko Kirov, one of ISOC’s co-founders, expects that licensing will allow government officials to take kickbacks from ISPs. In his words, an Internet connection “officially” costs up to US$300, but “in order to get the (phone) line, an additional US$500 to US$1000 should be given to whom need be.” Local Internet experts are afraid that licensing access would give way to licensing — and tax-milking — other services that use the Internet as a medium, such as e-mail and Web-carried phone calls. There are also fears that licensing would allow the phone company to require smaller providers to use prohibitively expensive hardware for the compulsory links and thus run the competition out of business.
Kirov suspects that the pending privatization of Bulgaria’s telecom company might be one of the major reasons behind the government’s current Internet regulatory zest. The sale is expected to bring about a billion dollars to the state’s budget. In order to attract better offers, the CPT might want to strengthen the telecom’s monopoly position. The CPT “would rather destroy the Internet market,” Kirov says. “When the phone company becomes a provider (which was inconspicuously announced), it will have a significant advantage since the company lawfully possesses and controls the resources for providing access to smaller access providers.”
ISOC has filed a claim in court that the decision to license ISPs violates existing telecom legislation in Bulgaria. In response to this the Supreme Court passed an interim order June 17 to suspend license fees for ISPs until a final decision.
The society has waged a media campaign against the proposed measures, but politicians seem unwilling to listen. They may soon have to.