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Russian parliament may discuss decriminalizing punishment for likes, reposts

"I would meet the authors of this letter if necessary," the State Duma speaker said.

State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS

State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin

© Anton Novoderezhkin/TASS

MOSCOW, August 19. /TASS/. Vyacheslav Volodin, the chair of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said he had received a request from Russian internet giant Mail.ru to decriminalize social media likes and reposts and may discuss it with the authors soon.

"I received the request and forwarded it to heads of relevant parliamentary committees - [Chair of Committee on Statehood Development and Legislation Pavel] Krasheninnikov and [Chair of Committee for Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Leonid] Levin, so that they could study it and prepare their proposals," the State Duma speaker told reporters on Saturday.

"It is possible that I would meet the authors of this letter if necessary," he said.

He said that the heads of State Duma committees are to prepare their response after the summer recess ends, probably in mid-September.

Mail.ru group earlier asked Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova to formulate a query to the Constitutional Court with a question if the enforcement of Article 282 of the Criminal Code (Incitement of Hatred and Humiliation of Human Dignity) was a violation of the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens proclaimed by Article 29 of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees the freedom of thought and speech.

Mail.ru Group also asked the State Duma to initiate a bill on the amnesty of those convicted for actions in social networks, if such actions had not entailed socially harmful effects, and the Supreme Court to summarize courts’ law enforcement practices in cases involving responsibility for crimes in the Internet (in particular, reposts, likes and posts in the social networks).

On Friday, Moskalkova said she welcomed the idea of liberalizing Article 282 of the Criminal Code in order to ease punishment for likes and reposts in social networks.

"I support the idea of liberalizing this article. I believe it is important to avoid artificially increasing the number of people with convictions, because this fundamentally upsets human lives," she said when asked about the issue.

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