Snuggle in the networks

President Dmitry Medvedev appointed the head of the Ministry of Communications, Igor Shchegolev, to be responsible for developing proposals to amend media legislation regarding the limits of liability of online publications for posting reader comments and statements by third parties that violate Russian legislation, including legislation on countering extremist activities. In other words, if someone did something bad in the comments to an article, for example, on a forum, then the online publication should be held accountable for it. Previously, everything was limited to a warning from the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor), which sent warnings to online publications if they wrote any extremism in their comments. If the publication did not remove the specified comment in time, it could be closed. Now they probably want to increase the degree of responsibility.

However, as suggested by the editor of the Runet Echo project, author of the Daily Journal, Alexey Sidorenko, it is possible that we are talking about changing the rules in the other direction. At a meeting with bloggers, Medvedev promised that the “one-day rule” would be removed or changed, according to which the publication must remove objectionable comments within 24 hours. However, Sidorenko draws attention to the too general wording of the order, so Medvedev’s promise can be interpreted in the opposite way.