The prosecutor's office is seeking to remove an anti-police abbreviation from the VKontakte network page

The prosecutor's office of Veliky Novgorod filed a lawsuit against the social network "VKontakte" a requirement to remove from one of the pages of an image with a known anti-police acronym.

19 November 2013, it became known that the Smolninsky District Court Petersburg, a lawsuit was filed by the prosecutor's office of Veliky Novgorod against LLC "In contact with". The prosecutor's office requires that the owners of the social network restricted access to graphic images posted on the page one of the users. Block the whole page of the prosecution is not requires.

Reason for filing a lawsuit was what the netizen posted on her image page with a famous English phrase offensive to police officers, and the corresponding abbreviation. According to the conclusions experts, the images "indicate negative assessment of the social group (police)" and "possible provocative influence on an indefinite circle of people". Obviously, we are talking about request to block content based on its extremist orientation.

On November 20, 2013, a hearing on the case was held at the Smolninsky District Court. As stated in the case card on the court's website, "the case has been started from the beginning" due to "a change in the basis or subject of the claim, an increase in the size of the claims."

Recall that we oppose the inclusion of police officers among vulnerable social groups protected by anti-extremist legislation, and, more broadly, we consider it right to exclude the vague concept of "social group" from anti-extremist articles. In addition, we note that, according to the decision of the Supreme Court Russian Federation dated July 28, 2011, the limits of permissible criticism regarding officials more broadly than in relation to private ones.

Sources

• The prosecutor's office through the court requires VKontakte to close the user's page // Fontanka.Ru. November 19, 2013
• Case card No. 2-3309/2013 ~ M-3214/2013 // Website of the Smolninsky District Court of St. Petersburg. 2013. November 21.