Maxim Ali has commented for the Profile magazine on the draft law on sanctions against foreign Internet resources noted in censorship

On December 9, the State Duma of Russian Federation will hold the first reading of the bill on sanctions against foreign Internet resources that censor Russian news.  If the legal act is adopted, with the approval of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the prosecutor’s office will be able to demand from Roskomnadzor to include violators in a special register, issue a warning, as well as a penalty or partial or complete blocking of resources that have not eliminated the violations. The authors of the initiative explain the relevance of the bill by numerous facts of unjustified restriction of access of Russians to information of domestic mass media “from individual Internet resources, including those registered outside the Russian Federation”, including Twitter, Facebook and Youtube.

According to Head of IP/IT practice at Maxima Legal Maxim Ali, the paradox of the bill is that the violation of freedom of information dissemination by Internet services will be punished by blocking such services. “The decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office will affect ordinary Internet users, who will be denied access to the service, where (in the opinion of the Prosecutor General’s Office) the right of the Russians to free distribution of information is violated,” – explained the expert to the Profile weekly magazine.

Maxim emphasized that the reasons for the law are worth looking for in the political plane. The law demonstrates the hidden purpose of the earlier initiative called the “The sovereign Internet Law”, which was presented as a protection against Russia’s disconnection from the Internet, but now it is clear that its “technical means of counteracting threats” will actually be used to block sites.

Against the background of the fight against counterfeit news YouTube, Facebook and other major services can remove all sorts of materials from pro-governmental Russian sources. These measures are an obvious response from our state, said Maxim Ali.

To read the full article (in Russian) please see the website of the Profile magazine >>>