Russia has made a new law according to which, devices that are not pre-installed with the Russian software couldn’t be sold. Although the law doesn’t apply to all the devices, still the sales of a lot of devices will affect once this law will be effective in the country. Russia might make this law effective in the country by July 2020.
To explain the motive of drafting and applying such law in Russia, the lawmakers and members of legislation have explained that the idea is to promote the widespread use of Russian software and endorse the technology. Besides that, it also aids Russian consumers to better make use of the devices they buy.
On the other hand, many of the intellectuals are also concern that Russia will make use of this technology for keeping an eye on its populace. As a consequence, it is anticipated that the device manufacturers might not sell their products in Russia and approach the foreign global markets.
Many of the tech blogs have already written about Russia’s cybersecurity market highlighting how Russia makes use of telecoms for surveillance. Well, manufacturers are allowed to import devices from other countries and sell in the Russian market but the precondition is that they have to install the Russian software in the question.
Read – Russian Hackers Modify Chrome & Firefox to Track TLS Web Traffic
The Russian Software
Recently, the lower parliament house of Russia has passed legislation that all the devices that will be sold in Russia will mandatorily have the Russian software installed into it. However, the upper legislation of Russia and the president, Mr. Vladimir Putin hasn’t signed the legislation and is still under process to become new law in Russia.
Mr. Oleg Nikolayev, who is the co-author of the bill has explained that if this legislation becomes the law, it gives an option to the consumers for choosing among the domestic or western applications. Thus, it boosts competition in the country.
He said, “When we buy complex electronic devices, they already have individual applications, mostly Western ones, pre-installed on them. Naturally, when a person sees them… they might think that there are no domestic alternatives available. And if alongside pre-installed applications, we will also offer the Russian ones to users, then they will have a right to choose.”
Opposing the newly proposed law, manufacturers and distributors in Russia deny to accept the new law. RATEK – Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Electrical Household and Computer Equipment argued that installing Russian software in some of the devices is not possible.
In-all where the new law could be fruitful for consumers through increasing the competition in the market but from the security and logistics aspect of installing the Russian software in advance, it will be quite a big deal for device manufacturers to complete all the formalities.