On Tuesday, July 10, the Russian-language site Wikipedia stopped working for one day. When trying to access it, users came across a page with a message about the protest of the world famous resource against the changes in the Federal Law "On Information" that the government was going to make.
This happened on the eve of the planned hearing in the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the draft law "On Amendments to the Federal Law" On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development. " According to it, access to the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet should be closed to those sites that contain illegal information that can cause direct or indirect harm to children. And this already affects the interests of the state, citizens and the Internet industry.
In this regard, Wikipedia, Yandex, the social network Vkontakte and the blog service LiveJournal tried to explain to Russian users that there are pitfalls in the new amendments. Because of them, changing the existing bill can lead to the emergence of strict censorship in the Russian Internet. The government will be able to legally create its own list of "black" sites and block access to them, including for political reasons.
The leaders of the largest Internet resources believe that the introduction of such significant changes should take place not so quickly and in a closed way, but only after discussing this issue on open platforms with the participation of representatives of all affected parties, including the Internet industry.
To convey this message to the audience, Wikipedia closed access to its pages for a day, and Yandex made a link on the main page in the inscription “Everything will be found”, following which one could read the opinion of the chief editor of the search engine regarding new changes in the law. Pavel Durov (Vkontakte) and the LiveJournal management have similarly warned their users.
Despite such actions by representatives of Internet resources, the new bill was adopted by the State Duma on July 11. And on July 18, 2012, it was approved by the Federation Council.
