On the night of July 9-10, 2012, the Russian-language block of the popular Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia stopped working for one day. Thus, a protest was expressed against the amendments to the law on information, which were considered in the State Duma on that day.
The amendments provide for the introduction of "black lists" and filtering of Russian Internet content in cases stipulated by law. The initiators of the bill assure that they introduced it solely for the purpose of protecting children from information dangerous for them: pornography, propaganda of drugs and psychotropic substances, calls for suicide, etc.
It is planned to create a unified register of Internet resources containing information prohibited for distribution in the Russian Federation. This list will be maintained by Roskomnadzor. The algorithm of action is as follows: Roskomnadzor will assign the responsibility of identifying Internet pages with illegal information to a non-profit organization. After revealing such information, the owner of the Internet resource will be instructed to remove the content. If this does not happen, the appeal will be forwarded to the hosting providers or telecom operators. They will have to restrict access to the illegal site. If this requirement is not met, then the Internet resource enters the registry. True, Roskomnadzor can make such a pre-trial decision only in cases when the sites give instructions on the manufacture of drugs, suicides, and also distribute pornography with the participation of minors.
In the presence of other prohibited information, the decision to remove it or close the Internet resource will be made by the court. Other information means propaganda of war, incitement of interethnic hatred, etc. The bill drew public criticism. It was opposed not only by Wikipedia, but also by many large Internet companies such as Yandex, Mail. Ru Group, Google and others.
The Internet community and many experts agreed that the texts of laws are not so important in Russia as the mechanism of their application. They see in this bill the introduction of latent Internet censorship in the country, which will affect sites that criticize the authorities.
