The Russian government this month began implementing a new Internet filtering policy, including a blacklist of banned web sites. The policy is supposedly about protecting Russian minors from material about suicide, drugs or pornography.
The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial. The list of banned websites will be managed by Roskomnadzor (Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications). It is meant to be updated daily, but its contents are not available to the general public. The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July.
“This law is one of several that threaten the freedom of information”, Reporters without Borders say. The press freedom group also stated its apprehension over a related series of state and legislative actions and proposals: the vast expansion of the doctrines of “state secret” and “high treason;” the intended prohibition on the use of tools for bypassing online censorship; and increases in penalties for convictions of “blasphemy.”
“Taken as a whole, the latest legislative initiatives in the Duma give all the appearance of a concerted attack on freedom to disseminate information,” Reporters without Borders said. “In each of these bills, imprecise language and vague definitions are far too open to interpretation”.
Russian media on Monday wrote about the blocking of Lurkomore, a popular Russian online encyclopedia focusing on collecting information on various Internet memes, popular figures, Internet resources and subcultures. As with Wikipedia, users write and edit the articles themselves. The reason for the ban was that one of the articles allegedly promoted the use of drugs.
Lurkomore changed its IP-address and removed the article in question and is now back on-line.
