The Constitutional Committee of the State Duma criticized the bill on news aggregators. According to committee members, the introduction of additional liability and fines for aggregator owners is excessive

Photo: Oleg Yakovlev / RBC

Excessive requirements

The introduction of additional liability for owners of news aggregators is excessive, as follows from the conclusion of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building (Constitutional Committee) on the bill on news aggregators (the text is available to RBC). In addition, the committee believes that the amount of fines proposed in the bill is disproportionate to the current Code of Administrative Offenses (CAO).

The Constitutional Committee, along with the relevant State Duma committee on information policy, is a co-executor on the bill on news aggregators, since it deals with amendments to the Administrative Code.

Amendments to the law “On Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information” and the Code of Administrative Offenses, regulating the work of news aggregators, were introduced to the State Duma on February 25 by deputies from the media committee Alexei Kazakov (A Just Russia) and Alexander Yushchenko (Communist Party of the Russian Federation). The authors of the bill want to oblige news aggregators to check disseminated information, ensure that extremist materials do not appear among media materials, and, at the request of Roskomnadzor, limit readers’ access to information if it violates the law. For failure to comply with these requirements, aggregators face fines from 100–200 thousand to 5 million rubles.

Members of the constitutional committee note that the concept of “news aggregator” as such is not enshrined either in the current legislation or in the proposed amendments. This allows for "ambiguous interpretation of the bill" and could lead to inconsistent law enforcement practices, committee members warn.

They also believe that the bill by Kazakov and Yushchenko introduces excessive liability for news aggregators for refusing to follow the instructions of Roskomnadzor: according to the draft, they must, at the request of the department, suspend the dissemination of information. Failure to comply with the instructions of state bodies, be it a decree, presentation or decision, even without additional regulation, entails the imposition of a fine within the framework of the current Code of Administrative Offenses, therefore, the need for additional regulation “is not seen,” the note says. In the current version of the bill, it is impossible to determine the “volume, nature and range” of news information, access to which may be limited at the request of Roskomnadzor , the authors of the conclusion note.

Finally, members of the constitutional committee believe that the fines proposed in the bill are disproportionate to the maximum possible amounts of administrative fines provided for in the Code of Administrative Offences. The bill provides for the highest fines for owners of news aggregators in case of failure to comply with the requirements to “bring the constituent documents into compliance with the requirements provided for by law” - 400-500 thousand rubles. for citizens and 3–5 million rubles. for legal entities. At the same time, according to members of the constitutional committee, the bill does not establish the requirements themselves, the violation of which will be considered a violation of the law.

The head of the Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications, Leonid Levin, explained to RBC that before the first reading, the bill must still receive the opinion of the relevant committee, that is, the committee that Levin heads, and the legal department of the State Duma, which reviews each bill. According to Levin, the Information Policy Committee plans to consider the bill on Friday, April 15. By this time, the deputy hopes, the committee will have already received a conclusion from the legal department. The first reading of the bill, according to Levin, should take place before the end of April.

RBC Pro development program Leadership: the first skill New leadership: how to manage a business in conditions of uncertainty The power of the environment: how a leader can grow together with the team Dictator's dictionary: what 6 phrases will betray an authoritarian manager Psychology in business: 6 types of destructive leadership A leader from whom people will not leave: how to earn the loyalty of subordinates Growing the pie. How great companies achieve goals and make profits

Criticized before

Earlier, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications gave a response to the bill. In its current form, the document “could lead to a significant restriction of activities and even the closure of Russian news search and aggregation services,” wrote Deputy Head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications Alexey Volin . A significant part of online media traffic comes from news aggregators; accordingly, restricting or closing such services will lead to a drop in the audience and income of online media, he noted. Volin pointed out that the demands of the deputies are excessive, since news aggregators work with information previously published in the media, and this information, in turn, is regulated by the law on the media.

Market participants also criticized the bill. Representatives of Yandex have repeatedly said that the company will not be able to comply with the requirement of the bill on pre-moderation of aggregated news, and did not rule out that if the bill is adopted in its current form, the Yandex.News service will be closed. Yandex Director for Legal Affairs Ekaterina Fadeeva, during the discussion of the bill in the State Duma, insisted that if news aggregators want to be equated with the media, then they should be provided with the same opportunities for exemption from liability that apply to the media in Article 57 of the media law . This article, in particular, relieves the media of responsibility for reprinting messages from news agencies if they are unreliable.

Leonid Levin also agreed that introducing liability for reprinting information is redundant. “Today the media does not bear this kind of responsibility, and everyone agrees that this provision should be excluded from the bill in any case,” Levin said on April 8.

The State Duma called fines for news aggregators excessive