MOSCOW, August 30. /TASS/. A court in Moscow has fined the Twitch streaming service 3 mln rubles ($49,257) over its refusal to delete a video interview with Ukrainian Presidential Aide Alexey Arestovich.
TASS was informed about it by an official of the Peace of Court Section No. 422, where the decision in question was handed down. The interview contained false information about Russia’s special military operation in Donbass.
"The court found Twitch Interactive Inc. guilty under part 2 article 13.41 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation (failure of the owner of a website to delete information if the obligation to delete such information is included in the legislation of the Russian Federation) and sentenced it to a fine of 3 mln rubles," the court official said.
According to the case files, which were earlier voiced at the judicial process, the reason for this decision was the platform’s refusal to remove a live stream containing a two-hour video interview with Arestovich.
Earlier, a Moscow court fined Twitch 2 million rubles ($32,838) for the platform's refusal to remove a video containing false information about events in the Ukrainian city of Bucha.
Twitch Interactive is a subsidiary of Amazon. It owns a video streaming service specializing in computer games, including broadcasts of gameplay and eSports tournaments. Videos on Twitch can be viewed both live and on demand. Twitch annually invites popular authors from different countries, including the CIS, to public events and private parties. Among them: TwitchCon, Twitch Rivals.
Last year, the Russian media watchdog identified 46 cases of the personal data law having been breached. It obligates Russian and foreign companies to store personal information of Russians only on the territory of the Russian Federation. The localization requirement applies to foreign companies that are not physically present in Russia if they carry out activities on the territory of the country.
The requirement to locate databases of Russian users in the Russian Federation has been in force since 2015, but culpability was established in 2019. To date, the storage of personal data of Russian users has been localized by about 600 representative offices of foreign companies, including Apple, Microsoft, LG, Samsung, PayPal, Booking.com and others.
Violating the localization requirement is punishable with a fine of up to 6 million rubles ($98,426), and in the event of a repeated violation, the fine can be up to 18 million rubles ($295,195).