M. Stulov

The Safe Internet League proposes to amend the laws "On Communications" and "On Information", the league's executive director Denis Davydov told Vedomosti. It is proposed to create a list of sites with child pornography that operators will be required to block.

However, the draft law, a copy of which is in Vedomosti's possession, does not only concern websites with child pornography – websites "promoting the use, production, and sale of narcotics" and "extremist materials" will also be added to the unified database of Internet threats. Operators will be required to block such websites "based on a decision by the federal body <...> exercising functions on supervision in the sphere of communications <...> on including a website <...> in the unified database of Internet threats," i.e. Roskomnadzor.

Press Secretary of the Minister of Communications and Mass Media Elena Lashkina says that the decision to block resources with illegal content was developed by the league together with operators and representatives of the Ministry of Communications. The draft law was created on the basis of this decision.

The league is starting the fight against child pornography with Yandex. The search engine refuses to remove the corresponding images and links from its results, explains Davydov: “We contacted Yandex with a request to filter such content, but the company refused, citing the fact that there is no corresponding law in Russia.” According to him, they managed to reach an agreement with other resources: VKontakte itself has pledged to regularly clean the social network, and now such links do not live for more than one day; and Mail.ru pages are moderated by special people.”

Yesterday, Davydov asked the competent authorities to "check Yandex for compliance with Russian legislation" - letters were sent to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, Minister of Internal Affairs Rashid Nurgaliev, Minister of Communications and Mass Media Igor Shchegolev. The Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs have not yet received this letter. The Ministry of Communications is aware of the letter, but it has not yet been received, since it was sent by mail, says Lashkina.

A Yandex representative explains that the search engine automatically filters sites with erotic content based on queries that do not clearly express an interest in pornography: if a user makes a query for “videos,” Yandex will not show him videos with pornographic content.

Google removes child pornography worldwide if it finds it, or tries to respond promptly to complaints, said Google spokesperson Alla Zabrovskaya. A Mail.ru search for "child pornography" shows a warning: an excerpt from the Criminal Code, said a Mail.ru Group spokesperson.

Representatives of leading telecom operators took part in the development of the amendments, the chairman of the league's board, Konstantin Malofeev, told Vedomosti.

VimpelCom representative Anna Aibasheva approves of the introduction of blacklists: this would simplify the operator's work. "We do not support the league's initiative: it seems to introduce tools that should be used for good purposes, but how exactly they will be used is not very clear," fears an employee of one of the companies participating in the league. He recalls that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also treated the proposal to introduce blacklists cautiously at a November meeting with bloggers (see inset).

The draft law may conflict with the Constitution, follows from the conclusion of the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC). In particular, it may violate the right of citizens to freely receive information and the ban on censorship. In addition, the creation of blacklists does not eliminate the problem of content "creeping" to other addresses. And tightening and monitoring access to the Internet will cause a negative reaction from both Russian users and business structures, as well as foreign commentators and may become factors that will worsen the image of Russia as a democratic state, RAEC summarizes.

We already have an example of a federal list of extremist materials from the Ministry of Justice, the content of which borders on idiocy, says Anton Nosik, a well-known blogger and media manager for the Soup company. It includes both Ron Hubbard's books, for which there has not been a single court decision, and the mysterious files 1.wmv and 2.wmv. We can assume that the new list will be no better - it is completely unclear who and how will decide which sites to include in it. Our law enforcement agencies have repeatedly found extremism, for example, in blogger posts or comments. Three years ago, blogger Savva Terentyev was convicted of inciting hatred towards the police. And this spring, the FSB closed the diary of writer Leo Kaganov for extremism (he posted a quote from an anti-Semitic poem). And last year, a court in the Far East ruled to close the video hosting site YouTube for extremism.

Davydov from the league says that the "final version" provides for an extrajudicial ban only for child pornography, but he categorically refuses to show this "version". It is obvious that the problem of illegal information on the Internet and negative content harmful to children on the Internet exists, but it is not clear how to solve it, admits the Prime Minister's press secretary Dmitry Peskov. He found it difficult to say whether the government would support the bill proposed by the league: "To do this, we need to understand how this control is proposed to be organized."

The state wants to create blacklists in the RuNet