It is prohibited to distribute a video about the number of people killed in a fire in Kemerovo

The Kemerovo court blocked the video with incorrect information about the death toll in the fire and angry comments.

In early May 2018, it became known that on April 27, the Central District Court of Kemerovo declared the page on VKontakte and YouTube with the video “Tragedy in Kemerovo!” prohibited from distribution. We are talking about a video of popular bloggers, authors of the NEMAGIA channel, Alexei Pskovitin and Mikhail Pechersky.

An administrative lawsuit to ban the pages was filed by the prosecutor of the Central District of Kemerovo in defense of the interests of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of an indefinite circle of persons. After examining the requirements of the prosecutor's office, the court found that the video contained false information about the number of deaths in a fire in the Zimnyaya Cherry shopping center. According to the court, " thus, the relatives of the dead and injured are misled, which leads to destabilization and the emergence of intentions to commit unlawful acts ."

In addition, the comments to the video on YouTube contain " negative information and information about the overestimated number of victims of the fire in the Zimnyaya Cherry shopping center, and calls to destabilize the situation in the Kemerovo region, statements about the need to commit illegal actions against the social group" civil servants " ", the court ruled. He also mentioned in the decision that “ statements substantiating and (or) asserting the need to commit unlawful acts ” in relation to representatives of any social group, according to the decision of the plenum of the Supreme Court of Russia, refer to actions aimed at inciting hatred or enmity, that is form the composition of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code.

However, the pages with the video recording were banned for distribution in Russia " in order to prevent the moral deformation of minors and in pursuance of the current legislation of the Russian Federation ", and were not recognized as extremist materials.

From our point of view, the decision to block is illegal. In itself, the dissemination of unreliable information about any event is not an illegal act, and the connection between the dissemination of such information and the emergence of criminal intent among those who have become acquainted with this information requires proof. As for calls in individual comments to the video, if they incited violence, YouTube should have been required to remove them, and not block the page entirely. In addition, we consider the arguments of the court based on anti-extremist legislation to be incorrect: from our point of view, officials should not enjoy additional protection in the form of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code, since they do not represent a vulnerable social group.

Sources

• Case card No. 2a-2139/2018 ~ M-1615/2018 // Website of the Central District Court of Kemerovo. May 3, 2018