Digital law for Russia. Nearest future or only a science fiction?

Abstract

Continuous debates on the future of digital economy in the world has generated many issues connected not only with the creation of its infrastructure, but also on the creation of an adequate regulatory framework for its functioning and onward development. Modern researches rightly criticize the existing traditional legal constructs that are not suitable for the existing realities in the economy and require significant adaptation or creation of new legal concepts that are capable to meet the challenges of the new coming digital environment. Russia along with other countries have approached the issue of creating a special regulation for digital economy – a “digital law”, which would become the backbone document containing the most important regulative principles for the whole digital sector. The adoption in 2017 of a number of digital policy documents and especially the Governmental Program “Digital economy” has given a new impulse and made a start to an open discussion on the perspective of recent adoption of a digital code. The authors seek to review existing regulation and doctrine in Russia to make suggestions on the content and structure of such a document.