Blocking of Navalny's blog recognized as legal

The court found it legal to block access to Alexei Navalny's blog in LiveJournal. At the same time, the court found Roskomnadzor's notification illegal and changed it.

On April 11, 2014, the Lyublinsky District Court of Moscow considered Alexei Navalny's complaint about the blocking of access to his blog in LiveJournal (navalny.livejournal.com) and recognized it as legal. At the same time, the court found Roskomnadzor’s notification illegal and changed his. A representative of Roskomnadzor said in court that Navalny called for riots in his blog. This refers to the following phrase from Navalny's post on March 14: " Now this is not just a" Rally against the war. "This is a procession and a rally against the lawlessness that the power of crooks and thieves creates ."

However, the court found that Roskomnadzor illegally and incorrectly issued the notice, including in it calls for mass riots and extremist activities. After the operative part of the decision was announced, the judge pointed out that there was no extremism and calls for riots in Navalny's blog, but allegedly there were calls for participation in public events that were not coordinated with the local authorities.

The post was published the day after access to Navalny's diary was restricted and is dedicated to blocking the blog. At the end of the post, Navalny called on readers to come out to an agreed march on March 15, dedicated to the situation in Ukraine.

According to the representative of the Navalny legal analyst of the Agora Association, Damir Gainutdinov, accusations of calls to participate in extremist activities appeared in the Roskomnadzor notification instead of accusations of calls to participate in uncoordinated actions, because the entire content of the relevant article of the law "On Information" was uncritically copied in the document. ...".

Recall, in our opinion, the law on out-of-court blocking of sites is applied by the authorities extensively, arbitrarily and inconsistently, without regard to its exact content. In this case, from our point of view, we are talking about an attempt by the authorities to stop the dissemination of not only appeals, but also any information about opposition actions, even past ones, which is an obvious restriction on freedom of speech.

Sources

• Zelensky Michael. The court recognized the blocking of Navalny's blog as legal // Slon.ru. 2014. April 11.
• The court found it illegal and changed the notification of Roskomnadzor to block Navalny's blog // Open news agency. 2014. April 11.