"Common sense.jpg": prohibit

On February 19, the federal list of extremist materials was once again updated. A few days later, the media drew attention to the fact that, among other things, an article that quoted verbatim a message from the website of the Russian President was banned. The situation looks absurd, but it is definitely not isolated: among the 1,677 items on the “extremist” list, there are many more curious examples of inattention (or ignorance) of judges when making decisions.

The most recent case was brought to the attention of the SOVA Information and Analytical Center, which monitors the process of combating extremism in Russia. Item 1674 of the federal list states that issue No. 2 (60) of the newspaper “Radical Politics” is prohibited in Russia. Next to the newspaper issue are all the headlines with the names of the authors of the materials published in it.

The first on the list is the material of Boris Stomakhin, a radical publicist and editor-in-chief of Radical Politics, who has already served five years for an “extremist” article. On November 21, 2012, he was charged again with calls for terrorism, and a week later, the Central District Court of Omsk declared the issue of Radical Politics with Stomakhin’s article “Anniversary of Freedom in the Land of Slaves” extremist. “Sova” points out that this, like several other articles in the issue, actually contains calls for violence and other signs of extremism.

But along with the material by Stomakhin and his associates is the article “Congratulations from the President” - judging by the copy of the newspaper published on the Internet, this is an almost verbatim reprint of the article from the Kremlin website, which says that Dmitry Medvedev awarded special forces who participated in the war with Georgia . The court decision also includes a copy of Vladislav Inozemtsev’s article from “Ogonyok”, and a reprint from the Belarusian opposition website “Charter 97” (where, according to “Sova”, only Lukashenko is criticized), and even a leaflet of the “Democratic Union” party from 1991. “Obviously, the Central District Court of Omsk, by its decision of November 28, 2012, recognized the entire issue of Radical Politics as extremist material, without considering the articles individually,” the information and analytical center concludes. And many other courts that make decisions on charges of extremism can be accused of the same inattention.

Another high-profile case concerned the film “The Innocence of Muslims,” which was banned in Russia amid riots in Arab countries. There was a lot of hype around the video itself: either the Minister of Communications Nikolai Nikiforov would threaten to close YouTube if it did not remove the low-quality film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, then the Grozny court would rush to show loyalty and recognize the film as extremist before the Moscow one (and the Prosecutor General’s Office would have to justify itself, calling the decision “interim "). As a result, the court called (and the Ministry of Justice included in its list) a non-existent link on YouTube as extremist, having made a mistake in the URL of the page with “Innocence of Muslims.” However, even if the court had indicated the correct link, nothing terrible would have happened to the film: it would not have been the original film, or even its trailer, that would have been banned, but the Russian translation of this trailer.

Errors in indicating the addresses of prohibited sites are not uncommon in the list of extremist materials. Most often, courts like to replace periods in URLs with other characters: say, spaces or slashes. In 2011, the Zasviyazhsky District Court of Ulyanovsk decided to recognize the entirely popular blog hosting site LiveInternet as extremist, but they made a mistake and recognized “livAinternet.ru” (“Sova” writes that the same court recognized the address “www.TATARLAR” as extremist, forgetting to indicate “.ru” at the end; at the time of writing, the address was indicated correctly).

There have been cases when judges were not sealed. In 2009, the Cherepovets City Court banned the electronic journal of modern literature “Samizdat” at the Maxim Moshkov library, located at zhurnal.lib.ru, but forgot to indicate which of the tens of thousands of materials in it violated the law. Moshkov did a simple thing: he changed the domain to a non-banned one. Blogs on LiveJournal were also included in the list of extremist materials, but this was of little use: some changed their address, while others continued to keep a diary, as if there had been no court decision.

It sometimes happens that different courts at different times recognize the same materials as extremist, which is why duplicate items appear on the federal list. But in Bashkiria they managed to ban the book of Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels, although the works of the leaders of the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany are extremist directly from the definition of the term “extremist materials” set out in the first article of the law “On Combating Extremist Activities.” Exactly the same situation arose with Heinrich Himmler’s book “The SS Man and the Question of Blood.”

It is unclear the meaning of including such mysterious items in the federal list as, for example, “files 14s.jpg, devushka.doc (and a number of others - Lenta.ru), contained on DVD disc No. 5.” Obviously, this does not mean that any jpg image with the name 14s and any document “devushka” are automatically extremist. But what is there, on this “disc No. 5”, is known at least to the court itself. But the Yalchik District Court of Chuvashia naturally banned “files” with the names “I made a discovery.doc” and “Truth teres.doc”. But the Ordzhonikidze District Court of Ufa was not lazy and outlined in detail the contents of the prohibited leaflets and posters. So detailed that it would not be surprising if this decision itself is ever recognized as extremist.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials has existed since 2007, but the confusion in it is about the same as in the register of prohibited sites, which appeared in November 2012. The register is formed by the decisions of experts, but it is obvious: even if this task were entrusted to the courts, a lot of errors would be unavoidable. Cataloging harmful information on the Internet may not be a bad idea, but teaching judges how to use computers would be a good start. Otherwise, the entire Internet will be banned out of ignorance.

Sources

• Suleymanov Sultan. “Common sense.jpg”: ban // Lenta.ru. 2013. February 25.