MOSCOW, January 13. /TASS/. The Russian State Duma is going to discuss the draft law that sets a limit on foreign ownership of online movie theaters to 20% and introduces a number of other limitations.
Online movie theaters include services that monetize their features through advertising, or provide video content via subscription for a fee.
The draft law introduces a limit on foreign ownership for audiovisual services with more than 100,000 Russian Internet users per day over the course of a month, and services with a monthly audience of more than 20,000 users daily.
Such services will be included in a special register. Exceptions might be made for the services important for national defense and state security, as well as for the services that mainly offer content created by individuals.
It also establishes a mechanism for removing misleading, private, discrediting information per user requests; and the need for classification and labeling of content in order to protect children from information harmful to their health and development.
Russia’s telecom and IT watchdog Roskomnadzor will monitor services’ compliance with these requirements.
Failure to submit or miss the deadlines for submitting required information to Roskomnadzor, or providing false information is expected to be punished by a fine from 10,000 rubles ($168.26) to 30,000 rubles ($504.77) for individuals, and from 50,000 rubles ($841.28) to 300,000 rubles ($5.047) for legal entities.
The requirements of the draft law will not apply to audiovisual services, providing access only to the user's content, because it is impossible to fully control the content, as well as to Internet search engines.