Russian dare

The State Duma adopted in the first reading the law on the “right to oblivion”, which obliges Internet search engines to delete the links to the information on the information regarding their information. This is reported by Interfax.

According to the document, a citizen may require that the Internet search engine delete references to false information about him and to information published in violation of the law. Along with this, the law gives a citizen the right to demand references to reliable data on events that happened more than 3 years ago. The exception is information about the events “containing signs of criminally punishable acts, the terms for prosecution of which were not expired”, as well as the inconsistent or outstanding criminal record.

At the same time, the search engines do not have the right to disclose information about the fact of the applicant's appeal to him. If the search engine operator refuses to satisfy the requirement, he is obliged to motivate such a decision. The applicant, in turn, has the right to appeal this refusal in court.

For non -compliance with the law for search engines, large administrative fines are provided. Failure to fulfill the claim of citizens to delete information without providing a reasoned explanation will entail a fine of 100 thousand rubles. If the search engine operator within 5 days does not execute a court decision to remove links, the amount of the fine will be 3 million rubles.

The bill was submitted to the lower house on May 29. The authors of the document referred to European experience. In June 2014, the Public Chamber recommended that the State Duma adopt a norm similar to the decision of the European Court, according to which any citizen of the country of the European Union may demand from the search engine to remove the link to “useless”, “incorrect” and “outdated” information from the search results. This right is called in the decision "the right to oblivion." Meanwhile, a citizen cannot demand the deletion of information from the source site, even if the information is unreliable.

Search systems sharply opposed the bill. In particular, Google noted that the norms of the Russian bill are fundamentally different from the current in Europe. Yandex stated that the document violates the constitutional right of citizens to search, access and receive information. In the case of the adoption of the law, the company was noted, access to a large array of socially significant information will be difficult. First of all, it will hit the work of information sites and the media.

Meanwhile, on June 11, the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Traporos Leonid Levin invited Internet companies to prepare his amendments for the second reading of the document.