The ECHR communicated complaints about the blocking of five Russian websites

The European Court of Justice has asked the Russian authorities questions regarding blocking legislation.

On September 15, 2017, it became known that on August 30, 2017, the ECtHR communicated complaints websites about the blocking of the Kasparov.ru , Grani.ru , EZH.ru , the website of the Roskomsvoboda project, and the Worldview of Russian Civilization portal (razumei .ru). The ECtHR combined five applications into one case, considering that they raise similar issues. The interests of the affected sites in the ECtHR are represented by the lawyers of the Roskomsvoboda project, the Agora International Human Rights Group and the Media Rights Defense Center. The applicants believe that the restriction of access to the sites is illegal and "does not pursue a legitimate aim".

“ The ECHR is considering cases of blocking websites in Russia for the first time. This topic has not been particularly raised before, there were two Turkish lawsuits, and that’s all,” Agora analyst Damir Gainutdinov told Kommersant. “ Therefore, our cases will set standards for the whole of Europe ". Gaynutdinov stressed that the governments of other countries have also begun to pass laws on media blocking, and therefore it is necessary to clarify the position of the ECtHR as soon as possible.

Recall that the sites "Kasparov.ru", "Grani.ru" and "Ezh.ru" were blocked on March 13, 2014 under the law of Lugovoy, that is, at the request of the Prosecutor General's Office and Roskomnadzor. The prosecutor's office explained the blocking by the fact that the sites published information about public events held in violation of order, tendentiously covering the actions of their participants.

The website of the Roskomsvoboda project was blocked in February 2016 at the request of the Anapa City Court, which declared that information about anonymizers and ways to bypass Internet blocking was banned from distribution. The restriction on access to the site was lifted after the content of the banned page was replaced with a document from the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, which also listed tools to bypass the blocking.

The owner Evgeny Bulgakov from Bryansk filed a complaint with the ECHR about the blocking of the site "Worldview of Russian Civilization". Access to this and several other sites was blocked in 2012 due to the fact that a book was published on their pages, which was included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials. Despite the fact that Bulgakov removed the banned book, his website was not unblocked.

The ECtHR communicated the complaints and turned to the Russian authorities with questions on the case, the answers to which must be given by January 15, 2018. Among other things, the judges asked whether the rules of the Russian legislation on blocking are “ sufficiently precise and predictable in their application ” and “ whether they provide a sufficient degree of protection against arbitrariness ”.

The SOVA Center considers the blocking of all these sites unlawful. We oppose the out-of-court blocking provided for by Lugovoy's law, as we are convinced that the need to restrict access to online resources should be determined by the court after considering all the circumstances. We consider it illegal to block anonymizing sites and information about them in Russia, since these sites themselves do not contain anything illegal. The practice of restricting access to sites because of one banned material seems to us a disproportionate measure: from our point of view, law enforcement agencies should seek only the removal of dangerous information.

Sources

• Alexander Chernykh. The European Court will enter the RuNet on the case // Kommersant. 2017. September 15.
• Application no. 12468/15 OOO FLAVUS against Russia and 4 other applications // European Court of Human Rights. 2017. September.