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Deutsch: Russland: Altes und Neues in Sachen Internet-Zensur

A new Russian law intended to protect minors from “harmful” content entered into force on 1 September 2012 bringing forth confusion and, at the same time, hilarious and even dangerous results.

"The law’s vagueness and inconsistencies render its repressive provisions even more threatening and are encouraging journalists to censor themselves. The vague definition of ’harmful content’ leaves too much room for interpretation and increases the probability of overblocking. As defined, the requirement to put age ban labels on content is absurd and dangerous. On the grounds of protecting minors, this law is likely to place serious obstacles on the media’s ability to provide the public with general news coverage. We urge parliament to clarify this law and to strike out those provisions that violate the constitution and international agreements that Russia has ratified," stated Reporters Without Borders said.

Under the final version of the law, the media must prevent children from seeing content that contains violence, sex or rude words or content encouraging them to smoke or drink alcohol. Vladimir Pikov, the spokesman of Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications), said on 29 August 2012 that, with the exception of news agencies, all online media had to place age bans on their content. Moreover, Pikov stated that when it was complicated to place a ban label to individual articles, then the entire website had to be labelled.

This has led to cases when online media representatives decided to label their entire site in order to avoid any risk.

A Russian channel will censor “The Simpsons” cartoon series banning scenes of violence, drinking, and smoking before 11 pm. “Under the new law we cannot show ‘The Itchy & Scratchy Show’ from ‘The Simpsons’ before 11 pm”, said general director Lev Makarov.

Moreover, the majority party of the Russian Parliament has announced the intention to introduce new amendments to the libel law to find and punish those posting anonymous insults on the Internet.

Russia amended the law on libel during this spring adding harsh new administrative punishments for defamation. In October 2011, the Upper House Commission for Development of Civil Society approved a draft law "Against Internet Extremism," suggesting all postings on the Internet are public and thus, Internet libel would be punished with sentences of up to five years in prison just as the mass-media libel.

“The law already includes the norms providing responsibility for journalists – both the media companies and authors. But what shall we do if some anonymous user makes insulting statements? We will consider the questions connected with legislation improvement in this direction so that anonymity no longer gives such people the illusion of impunity,” said deputy speaker of the Lower House and member of the Culture Committee Sergey Zheleznyak.

This new amendment will allow police officers to find the identity of anonymous libels and, according to Zheleznyak, it will apply to Internet users, not just journalists.

Major threat to news coverage from law "protecting minors" online (1.09.2012)
http://en.rsf.org/russie-major-threat-to-news-coverage-from-01-09-2012...

Russia To Censor ‘South Park’ and ‘The Simpsons’ (30.08.2012)
http://www.inquisitr.com/316980/russia-to-censor-south-park-and-the-si...

United Russia mulls amendments to track anonymous Internet slanderers (29.09.2012)
http://rt.com/politics/united-russia-internet-slanderers-814/