Roskomnadzor massively block articles about Kostin

Roskomnadzor began to massively block articles about Andrei Kostin. It all started with a series of obviously custom -made publications directed against the head of VTB, but ended with a court decision, which lawyers call “legal nihilism”. The Bell studied the entire course of VTB proceedings in the courts that ended with the removal of materials.

Andrey Kostin. Photo: Agency "Moscow"

What's happened. The fact that Roskomnadzor has already blocked more than 1000 articles about the head of VTB Andrei Kostin from last year, the first to pay attention to Vedomosti. The basis for such mass blocking is several court decisions in St. Petersburg. Lawyers surveyed by the publication call this a dangerous precedent and example of "censorship of Runet in the interests of individuals."

• On Thursday, Yandex.Dzen limited access to the investigation of Baza journalists (founded by Life News immigrants) about the apartments, which were first owned by VTB, and then the journalist of VGTRK NAILA ASSKER-ZADE. The representative of Yandex.Dzen confirmed to The Bell that the service first received a complaint about false information, and then notification of Roskomnadzor that the owner of the BAZA channel must delete the material with prohibited information on the VTB lawsuit on the protection of business reputation of November 16, 2018.
• The Baza Telegram channel wrote in response that he checked the hypothesis that a new principle of blocking content appeared in Runet de facto-by keywords. “At the end of last year, the lawyers of VTB achieved a unique decision: the court sided with the bank and ordered Roskomnadzor to block any publications where there are words-“ Nalya Asker-Zade ”,“ Andrey Kostin ”and“ apartment, ”the resource claims.
• In total, according to the information of the Roskomsvoboda public project, Roskomnadzor, on the basis of court decisions on the claims of VTB, has already blocked about 1000 links to Internet resources, and sometimes the sites themselves.

What kind of solutions. The Bell found and studied the court decisions on VTB claims, on the basis of which blocked decisions are made. VTB Bank appealed to the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region demanding that the removal of materials with the mention of Kostin and Asker-Zade at least four times. Here are briefly the course of these proceedings:

• The first statement was received on April 11, 2018, after a series of materials resembling customs. Then the lawsuit concerned only 8 publications on the site ustav.net. The decision said that it was impossible to establish the author and distributor of information, but it contains allegations of unlawful actions that are not true and defeat the bank’s business reputation.
• But the publications on the Internet continued, and in the summer of 2018, VTB again appealed to the court with a request to remove them from a dozen sites like Newsland.com, Rucompromat.com, etc. - The court united these claims in one thing , in which in September 2018 he also decided in favor of VTB. Most of these sites, like USTAV, were completely deleted, but the materials appeared on other resources.
• The next lawsuit from VTB came to court in October 2018 and a month later was also completely satisfied . Just on him, according to Yandex.Zen, Roskomnadzor referred when he demanded to remove the investigation from the Baza project. In this court decision, it was about publications on 14 sites (Chel.pro, News-sirotin.com, rnbee.ru, kompromat1.net and others). The lawsuit and the decision were repeated by the previous two cases, but in the decision there was not a word about the possible blocking of similar content on other resources.
• Finally, at the end of 2018, VTB went to court again. The resolving part of the decision announced on February 11, 2019 also refers to the complete satisfaction of the claim: information posted on 30 sites, among which there were even a “Picabu”, the “Odnoklassniki” social network and Livejournal, recognized as inconsistent and defaming business reputation. At the same time, the reliability of the content itself did not understand. In this lawsuit, the VTB representative again referred to previous court decisions on the bank’s claims, on the basis of which the materials of a similar content have already been deleted.

How it all ended. The latter decision of the court says that information in the disputed publications about Kostin, VTB and Asker-Zade "can be confirmed only by the corresponding judicial, administrative and internal acts of the organization." But there are no such acts, since the corresponding cases against VTB or its employees, who are mentioned in controversial materials, have never been considered by either the courts or law enforcement agencies. On this basis, the court ruled that "such facts did not take place in reality, and therefore do not correspond to reality and are clearly defamatory."

But most importantly , the court prohibited the “re-reproduction and distribution” in the Russian Federation indicated on these sites and discriminating the reputation of VTB information, and at the same time “on any other sites by copying, re-reproduction, or in any other way”.

Why is it important. Mass blocking on the basis of private lawsuits is an unprecedented decision and legal nihilism, experts surveyed by “Vedomosti” say .

What is wrong here. The last court decision can be interpreted too widely. On its basis, Roskomnadzor independently may require blocking articles about Kostin and VTB on any resources - both high -quality and not very. At the same time, during all four proceedings in St. Petersburg regarding the huge number of publications about VTB, serious violations were committed, lawyers say:

• The court did not attract site administrators as defendants;
• The reliability of publications was not analyzed;
• The court did not indicate in the decision which information does not correspond to reality and are defamatory;
• Decisions in individual claims cannot be applied to block other materials or sites: the court must re -evaluate each text, and the author must have the right to prove to the court that the information stated is correct.