Translated material
The law on control over information on the Internet came into force
On July 30, 2012, the signed President July 28 Federal Law No. 139-FZ "On Amendments to the Federal Law "On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development" and certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation". The law, in particular, provides for the creation of a unified registry of domains and websites, on which contains information prohibited for distribution in Russia. According to the law, the federal laws "On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development", "On communications" and "On information, information technologies and protection information" introduces concepts related to the Internet, and provisions, regulating its functioning on the territory of Russia.
Now "in places accessible to children" , access is possible only to such information products that have previously passed a special examination, moreover, the accreditation of experts and expert organizations is carried out by the Federal executive body authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation Federation.
In addition, a unified automated information system " Unified registry of domain names, pointers pages of sites on the Internet and network addresses that allow identify sites on the Internet that contain information, distribution of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation " . Creation, formation and maintenance of the register carried out by the authorized federal government of the Russian Federation executive authority in the manner prescribed by the Government Russian Federation. At the same time, it is allowed to involve in the formation and maintenance registry operator registry "organization, which is registered on the territory of the Russian Federation.
To the registry sites with pornographic information or images, propaganda are included drugs, psychotropic substances, as well as information encouraging children to actions that could harm their health, including calls for suicide. In addition, the basis for inclusion in the register is " a court decision that has entered into force on the recognition of information disseminated via the Internet, information, the dissemination of which is prohibited in the Russian Federation .
The mechanism of functioning of the registry is as follows: within a day from the moment of inclusion in the registry of a domain name and (or) a universal pointer site pages in the network, the hosting provider must inform the site owner about the need to remove prohibited information. Having received a notification hosting provider, the site owner is obliged to remove the prohibited content within 24 hours. information, otherwise the hosting provider must within 24 hours restrict access to his site. If neither the hosting provider nor the site owner take appropriate measures, include in the register the address of the site where the prohibited information. After that, within a day, the telecom operator is obliged to restrict access to the site.
In the event that measures to delete information have been taken, no later than three days from the date of submission of the corresponding application from the site owner, hosting provider or telecom operator domain name, universal pointer web site pages or network address are excluded from the registry.
Decision to include domain names and/or universal pointers of pages of sites on the Internet and network addresses of sites in the registry may be appealed by the site owner, hosting provider, telecom operator to court within three months from the date of the decision.
At the stage of consideration, the law caused a strong reaction in the Russian society: many saw in it the danger of censorship ; O the need to improve the bill said in in particular, the Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications Nikolai Nikiforov.
The State Duma introduced a number of changes. Ultimately, however, the mechanism provided for by the new law the creation of the Unified Register remained unclear, and the functioning - ill-conceived. The criteria on which decisions will be made are not clear. federal bodies authorized by the Government of the Russian Federation executive power, taken in accordance with their competence in the manner established by the Government of the Russian Federation" , on the basis of which sites should be included in the registry. However, it can be concluded that these decisions are out of court. Moreover, the essence of the prohibitions is such that it is difficult to imagine judicial review of such decisions.
It also remains unclear whether the blocking only those materials that are included in the Federal List extremist materials, precisely as websites or Internet pages, or under the law will also cover materials prohibited specifically as printed publications and posted on the Internet.
Deadline, within which site owners or providers must have time to respond to the inclusion of the corresponding item in the register is clearly insufficient.
The registry must include " network address, allowing to identify a site on the Internet , " and the telecom operator is still obliged to " restrict access to prohibited dissemination of information posted on the Internet , IP addresses. It is not specified in what cases blocking of the entire domain (subdomain) is carried out, in which - pages, and in which - by IP. Thus, a mechanism is laid for arbitrary solutions, and you can still be afraid of blocking access to many quite innocent materials just in the neighborhood.
Finally, it is not clear how the law will be enforced if users will start using proxy servers to bypass imposed restrictions.
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