Court orders YouTube and four other sites blocked over “extremist” content

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Howard Lifshitz

Reporters Sans Frontieres | July 30, 2010

Reporters Without Borders condemns the draconian and disproportionate ruling issued by judge Anna Eisenberg in the Russian far-east city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur on 16 July ordering local Internet Service Provider RA-RTS Rosnet to block access to video-sharing website YouTube and four other websites from 3 August onwards.

YouTube is to be blocked because of a nationalist video called “Russia for the Russians,” which is on a list of extremist content banned by the justice ministry. The other four sites – three online libraries (Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru) and Web.archives.org, which keeps copies of old or suppressed web pages – are to be blocked for having copies of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

“This unilateral decision, blocking entire websites instead of targeting the offending web pages, violates freedom of information and could affect all of Russia’s Internet users,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Russia’s laws on extremism are much criticised because they are used arbitrarily and because they can have such dire consequences as the blocking of independent websites.”

The press freedom organisation added: “There are other mechanisms, envisaged in YouTube’s user conditions, for obtaining the withdrawal of videos that pose a problem. Why did the prosecutor take this case directly to court? Why didn’t he just contact YouTube’s moderators or those in charge of the online libraries to request withdrawal of the offending content?”

The head of the Russian ISP, Alexandre Ermakov, said he would appeal against the ruling and would not execute it because, in his view, he did not have the right to restrict access to information in the absence of any violation of the user conditions of the service offered. He added that he proposed several ways for filtering out access to the offending content, without blocking the entire domain name, but the court ignored him.

Describing the ruling as “contrary to the constitution,” Google said the content of the “Russia for the Russians” video could have been reported to the YouTube moderator as a violation of the user conditions.

Reporters Without Borders added Russia to its “Countries under surveillance” list in the March 2010 update of its “Enemies of the Internet” report (http://en.rsf.org/surveillance-russia,36671.html). The Internet became Russia’s freest medium for sharing information after the Kremlin brought the broadcast media under control at the start of the Putin era.

But the Internet’s independence is being threatened by arrests and prosecutions of bloggers and by the blocking of independent websites on the grounds of “extremist” content. The authorities are also themselves now using the Internet extensively for propaganda purposes.

YouTube has a lot of content, including the Russian president’s TV station.

Russia: New “One Day Rule” for Censoring Comments on Demand

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Mixy Lorenzo

By Alexey Sidorenko | Global Voices | July 8, 2010

A decision [EN] by the Supreme Court of Russia on June 15 to “exempt” online news media outlets of responsibility for user comments has in fact turned out to be the introduction of a full-scale censorship procedure. Roskomnadzor, a federal service that supervises Internet and mass media communication for the Russian Ministry of Telecommunications, has introduced a new “one day rule” that says online media must delete or edit “inappropriate” comments on their websites within one day of being notified or risk losing their mass media registrations.

Forbidden topics are listed in Article 4 of the law “On Mass Media” [RUS]. These include incitement to hatred, terrorism, and violence, links to pornography, and disclosure of state secrets.

Roskomnadzor issued its first legal warning to a website Apn.ru by e-mail on June 23, but at that point it was not clear how quickly the comment should be deleted, or whether an official demand could be sent by e-mail. On July 6, Roskomnadzor published [RUS] a document describing the guidelines for notification with the lengthy title: “Procedure for Issuing Appeals to News Media Outlets that Circulate in Telecommunication Networks and on the Internet on Inadmissibility of the Abuse of Freedom of Mass Information” (full text [RUS])

The procedure is as follows.

• A Roskomandzor employee makes a screen shot image of the inappropriate comment, saves it on a hard drive, and prints it.
• Then an official “responsible for government control and law enforcement online”, approves the evidence of “abuse of the freedom of mass information” (the document clearly says “approve” not “judge” or “decide”).
• After this, the department sends an e-mail and a fax to the website owner with an order to delete or edit the questionable comment.
• If the media outlet does not follow the order within 24 hours, it will receive a legal notice. Several notices will lead to a lawsuit against the media outlet. If Roskomnadzor wins the lawsuit, the website loses its mass media registration.

Neither the law “On Mass Media“ nor Roskomandzor explain if the website would be shut down after losing its registration, but for most commercial media outlets it would mean an inability to function legally (get paid for ads, pay wages to its employees, etc).

Sergey Sitnikov, head of Roskomnadzor, explained [RUS] the goal of his department was to “prevent further dissemination of unlawful information,” but many Russian bloggers were disturbed by the idea, and heatedly discussed the matter on Habrahabr [RUS], an IT-related portal.

Some bloggers tried to look on the bright side (unsuccessfully). StrangeAttractor wrote [RUS]:

Если закон запрещает призывать через интернет к актам террора и хулиганства, то это нормально и хорошо. Но если запрещает высказывать своё мнение о чём либо … или гордиться своим национальным наследием …, то это чистой воды маразм и провокация

If the law forbids to incite to terrorism or hooliganism, it’s OK and it’s good. But if it forbids you to express your own opinion about something… or to be proud of your national heritage…, then it’s clear idiocy and a provocation

Newpravda wrote [RUS]:

С одной стороны мысль конечно хорошая, поясню – не давать права людям которые занимаются террором права слова, но зная нашу действительность под эту статью будут подводить всё что угодно, не удивлюсь что и крокодила Гену с Чебурашкой запретят за пропаганду чего нибудь.

On the one hand, it’s a good idea, let me explain – not to give the right to terrorists to speak freely. But knowing our reality, they [Roskomnadzor] will apply the ['one day rule'] to anything they want, I wouldn’t be surprised if they forbid Gena and Cheburashka [EN] [heroes of a popular cartoon] for propaganda of something.

Various effects and implications of the law have also been discussed Vitaliidaniuk expressed [RUS] skepticism about the efficiency of the document, arguing that it would be very hard to control Twitter comments often posted next to the articles or in integrated commenting systems (like Disqus or IntenseDebate).

Voldar suggested [RUS] that the awaited National Search Engine [EN] might be used to look for inappropriate comments and automatically send notices to the authors. XaosSintez wrote [RUS] about the huge potential for fake Roskomnadzor notices to block any kind of discussion. And xoco shared [RUS] his story of how authorities already monitor and control online and offline expression:

Печально все это. Как причастный к созданию одного из сайтов о городе Люберцы хочу поделиться своей историей. На форуме этого сайта ведется обсуждения о плохих дорогах, новостройках, чиркизонах. Так вот, там на форуме люди собрались выйти на улицу с демонстрацией на тему — почему ямы на дорогах полметра глубиной, ну и _поразмышляли_ о том что куда это годится и не перекрыть ли дорогу демонстрацией. В тот же день мы получили сообщение от «органов» из которого следовало, что мы должны предоставить всю информацию о пользователях активистах — ip, время захода и т.п. Якобы эти люди занимаются экстремистской деятельностью. Что будет дальше? Свободой слова тут и не пахло.

It is all very sad. Being connected to the creation of one of the community website of the city of Lyubertsy [EN] (Moscow satellite), I’d like to share my story. On the forum we discus bad roads, new buildings, chaotic markets. So, forum users were thinking of going to the streets to attract attention to the roads with holes that are a half meter deep, and were discussing if they should block city streets with a demonstration. The same day we received a message from the authorities that demanded information about the forum activists – IP-addresses, time of forum access, etc. As if these people were involved in extremist activities. What will happen next? There isn’t a trace of freedom of speech.

As a result of the discussion, bloggers established a hashtag on Twitter #ru_cenz in order to track all the incidents related to the new measures of content removal and RuNet censorship in general.

The latest practices introduced by Roskomnadzor not only violate the text of the Russian Constitution, that forbid any kind of censorship, but also appear to contradict president Medvedev’s point of view on the matter [RUS]. The case illustrates several features of the current political regime: lack of respect for laws and human rights, contradiction between words and deeds, and finally, a clear will to affect and control RuNet.

Herdict launches Russian and Persian interfaces

By BHRP

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society announces the launch of Persian (herdict.org/Persian) and Russian (nardict.ru) interfaces for Herdict Web, a project that aims to provide a clear picture of Web site accessibility around the world by utilizing crowdsourcing. Herdict tracks government and workplace filtering, server outages, and other types of inaccessibility.

Herdict gathers user-generated reports about Web site accessibility from around the world to draw a real-time image of which websites are inaccessible, in which countries and for how long. Users can participate in the initiative by either going directly to the site www.herdict.org or by downloading a browser add-on for Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Herdict Web launched in February 2009 to great accolades and has since received visitors from over 150 countries and over 100,000 reports.

Arabic and Chinese versions of the site are also available.

Internet Provider Says It Blocks Sites

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Yeowatzup

New fears of Internet censorship spread in the Russian blogosphere Monday after a wireless Internet provider co-owned by Russian Technologies acknowledged blocking access to some web sites.

Moscow-based users of the Yota provider have been unable to access web sites such as Garry Kasparov’s Kasparov.ru, Solidarity’s Rusolidarnost.ru and the banned National Bolshevik Party’s Nazbol.ru over the past few weeks, bloggers and the sites’ editors said.

Access also was patchy until Sunday to the site of opposition magazine The New Times, its web editor Ilya Barabanov said Monday.

Yota denied that it was blocking those sites. But Denis Sverdlov, chief executive of WiMax operator Skartel, which runs the Yota brand, did acknowledge that Yota blocks access to sites that are classified as extremist by the Justice Ministry. Because of that, Yota users cannot open the Chechen rebel web site Kavkazcenter.com.

“In November, we got an order from prosecutors recommending that we close access to extremist sites,” he said in e-mailed comments. “Since we are a law-abiding firm, we put the order into practice.”

As for users’ lack of access to the opposition web sites, Sverdlov blamed technical difficulties that arose after Yota introduced new IP addresses to cope with the rapid growth of its customer base. “On Oct. 23, we were assigned a bloc of 65,536 IP addresses. After we put them to commercial use, we found that IT managers of some other sites could not exclude them from those IP addresses they filter,” Sverdlov said.

As proof that there was no censorship, he said President Dmitry Medvedev’s official site at Kremlin.ru was at times inaccessible as well.

Kavkaz Center was declared extremist in a 2008 court decision and appears 10 times on the Justice Ministry’s list of more than 450 items classified as extremist. The ministry’s list does not mention any of the opposition sites that have complained of being inaccessible to Yota users.

Critics say the extremism law, which was widened in 2006, is being used to silence the opposition.

It is unclear why, with the exception of Yota, most national providers do not block access to Kavkaz Center.

A representative at Yota’s technical support hot line told the Novy Region news agency on Friday that the company was blocking 29 extremist sites. The unidentified representative said Kasparov.ru was not on the list but the list had been updated a week earlier.

Bloggers, meanwhile, are rattled by an audio file posted online Sunday in which a female voice — purportedly of a Yota support representative — says Kasparov’s and Solidarity’s sites are blocked because they are on that list.

“This strongly smells of political censorship,” said Denis Bilunov, a senior member of Kasparov’s Other Russia movement.

He said the most likely explanation was Russian Technologies’ involvement in the company.

The state-owned arms and industry behemoth bought a blocking stake in Telconet in November 2008.

A spokeswoman said Russian Technologies could not immediately comment on the allegations Monday.

Skartel spokesman Anton Belkov said he would not comment beyond Sverdlov’s statement.

Skartel has been building a network providing high-speed wireless Internet service since last summer and has said it wants to become a nationwide operator covering 180 cities within three years. State corporation Russian Technologies holds a 25.1 percent blocking stake in Skartel’s parent company, Telconet.

The Internet has been called the country’s last bastion of free speech after the state brought most national television channels and influential print media under its control over the past decade. Fears of a crackdown were raised last month after a video address by police officer Alexei Dymovsky lambasting corruption unleashed a string of copycat whistle-blowers airing their complaints online. Also last month, top search engine Yandex stopped ranking popular blog posts after several entries exposed problems that embarrassed government officials.