Cyberspace Blocked in Russia

There is an ongoing discussion of the “sites blacklist” created by the Mass Media Inspection Service in Russia on November 1st

A new law was introduced in Russia on November 1st which created a list of sites that the government deems illegal or harmful to children. The blacklist already contains more than 180 “harmful” websites and the number continues to grow. The Mass Media Inspection Service said that 41 out of 180 websites had already been blocked because they contained harmful material that the owners failed to delete within three days. According to the new law, individuals, businesses, organizations and government bodies can submit websites for the agency to review and then place on a blacklist. Such a one-way approach can easily lead to the shutting down many “peaceful” websites that have nothing to do with new Internet policy.

What are the reasons for such strict censorship policy? The law allows the Mass Media Inspection Service to block sites without a court order if content is found to promote child pornography, suicide or drug use. It can be seen as a government attempt to fight against a growing number of suicides and increasing incidence of drug smuggling. However, this method of solving the issues is dubious. It is more important to spend money on effective and thought-provoking campaigns than try and block sites with a few sentences that could theoretically harm young users. Youngsters do not jump put of windows due to simply reading articles on Wikipedia, Facebook, Vkontakte, Twitter and others. There are family issues, school pressure, drug abuse and all manner of other problems. Why not create centers for “at risk youngsters” at schools? Why not teach teachers to be more attentive to their students’ behavior while at school? Why not start a discussion on TV? What are the services that focus on working with at risk youth doing if that is their ultimate goal?

It seems like the government is so used to controlling the information flow in the Russian media (TV, magazines, radio, newspapers) that it decided to expand its influence into cyberspace. However, the idea and the methods of its implementation are half-thought out and inconsistent. The process of shutting down the sites is not transparent and the so-called blacklist of harmful sites is not known to the public. The owners of the blacklisted sites are sometimes not aware that their site’s content was partly blocked or blacked out. There is also a growing concern that the steps of MMIS are just the beginning of a process of shutting down free internet in the country. There is, by the way the example, a successful implementation of such policy in China.

The inconsistency of the new law can be seen in the behavior of the Mass Media Inspection Service. For example, Lurkmore, a popular humorous online encyclopedia and the popular library “Librusek” were hit, the latter because it contained a Russian-language copy of the book “The Anarchist Cookbook”, published in 1971. The two sites will be delisted after the deletion of its inappropriate content according to the MMIS. Another example of unfairly blacklisted victim site is Pobedish.ru which was the first blacklisted site. It was put on hold because of the post on suicide discussion written by psychologists in order to discourage at-risk users.

Internet inspection is senseless and ineffective. Blacklisting online services and controlling the internet’s content are met with opposition from many internet users and site owners. Just as with the law on cutting the number of universities in Russia, the new law on Internet censorship proves once again that the issue and methods of solving it are ill-chosen. They ban sites to make the Internet safer for the teenagers who may not even have the Internet, but have financial problems or family issues; they cut the number of strong universities while the branches of Moscow universities in the regions are functioning well without an official educational program. There is an iceberg issue here; the problem is solved on the surface but the measures do not change the root causes.