MOSCOW, July 31 (Itar-Tass) — The law on the register of the banned websites entered into force in Russia on July 30. The document describes the cases, when an internet resource can be shut down without a court verdict. The list includes the websites, which contain child pornography, “the instructions” for suicides or the information for making drugs.
Under the law, the websites will not be put on the register automatically. The supervising agency will shoulder the obligations to monitor the websites with the illegal information on a non-profit organization, the Novye Izvestia daily reported. After the exposure of such websites a non-profit organization will pass the information in the supervising agency that is to warn the owner of the internet resource about the illegal content found. If the website owner does not react within a day and does not remove the illegal content, the hosting provider is to do it. Particularly in case of the negligence of the provider the website will be put on “the black list”, after that the internet provider is to close the access to the internet resource within a day. The decision to put a website on the register may be appealed in court within three months.
The law evoked a very ambiguous response in the society, the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reported. The largest Russian-language internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia became the first internet resource that opposed the initiative of the lawmakers. As in case of the enactment of the law Wikipedia may be among the first candidates for shutdown. The problem is that each term or historical personality is described there in the detailed way. For instance, explaining what suicide is, Wikipedia does not only dwell on the meaning of this word, famous suicides, the reasons for suicide and etc, but also gives concrete receipts to commit a suicide. This is subject to a ban. But the owners of the internet portal already stated that they are not going to remove provocative materials, because they oppose “censorship in the Internet.”