A new internet law came into effect in Russia last year. Mainly designed to tackle extremist websites, the list of banned sites has already cast a much broader net. Things are likely to get even worse.
This is not the first time that Russia has faced censorship in the internet. For more than 5 years regional prosecutors have been requiring providers to block sites which have been banned by the courts. Up until recently sites were blocked if they were on the Federal List of Extremist Materials which contains 1520 books, articles and even social networking messages. First on the List is 'White Music', the album of the Omsk rock-group Order, and the last is the book 'Yids' by an unknown author, but there are also works of history, philosophy and art, and films too.
Recently this list has been filling up extremely fast. In March of last year, for instance, the Orenburg District Court declared 65 books and articles to be extremist in one swoop: these are mainly Islamic literature, including the books of Fetullah Gulen preacher and founder of a popular movement, who was exiled from Turkey. Why so many and why the district court? No need to search for conspiracy explanations, because all this literature was removed during a police search of an Orenburg flat, whose owner was found guilty of setting up an extremist cell.
Despite the list, the blocking of banned materials has hitherto been fairly random, so that a site blocked in the Tver Oblast remained completely accessible in neighbouring Vladimir Oblast. The new Register of Banned Sites, which went into operation on 1 November, deals with that problem.
According to the new law, Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for the Monitoring of Telecoms, IT and Mass Communications) oversees the Register, listing banned sites on the basis of information received from the Interior Ministry, the FDCA and the Federal Consumer Rights Protection Service, and also at the request of the courts.
The Register is accessible on the internet (zapret-info.gov.ru, in Russian) and both providers and operators are obliged to keep up to date with it, blocking access to sites or webpages that have been blacklisted. Any provider who doesn't keep up to speed on this can lose his license.
Note EU-Digest: the article above about RuNet is somewhat distorted as to the actual situation. For instance the description of Fetullah Gulen as a preacher and founder of a popular movement in Turkey is not totally correct without making some additions to this statement.
The agenda of the Gullen movement is to establish religious Islamic Sharia Government rule in all Muslim countries. Obviously this by itself already makes it quite legitimate for Russia to place the Gullen movement under surveillance. Also given the fact that a large segment of the Russian population and several surrounding states are Muslim. There is therefore no reason to believe that RuNet is taking the direction of the Great Chinese Firewall. Doing so would not speak well of Russia and the leadership is wise enough to know this.
Read more: Agentura.ru - RuNet: Russia on the Chinese road?
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