It's also interesting to note that Elena Mizulina, one of the people behind the bill, called Wikipedia "pedophile lobbyists" after they went blank to attract attention to this bill.
> ... the list of reasons for which the government will be allowed to shut down a site is now strictly defined ... (and) ... includes web pages which advocate suicide, substance abuse, excessively risky behavior, and child pornography.
Isn't this pretty much the same as they have in Australia and France?
Similar, yes, but the key distinction is that neither Australia nor France are governed by an autocratic regime with a history of using such laws to exert political control.
For example, let's say a group is organizing and advertising a demonstration on a social network, and the odds are good that the protest will result in a police crackdown. Might this be excessively risky behavior? The Kremlin's answer would likely depend on the group, and whether the ruling party has a political interest to clamp down.
Not the same. For example, sites that can be banned without court order include sites containing:
- any information about drugs, methods of their use and places where they could be bought (i.e. if your travel guide would contain a sentence like something like "in Goa, marijuana is frequently sold in bars" - it can be blacklisted, same if you host a book that contains chemical formula of cocaine or Pulp Fiction movie that depicts drug usage).
- information about chemical substances used in manufacturing of illegal drugs (which include such substances as iodine, sulfuric acid, acetone, hydrochloric and acetic acids and many other basic chemical substances)
The site can be banned without a court order, but can be unbanned only by court order. Given almost complete absence of independent judiciary in Russia and the widespread practice of expansive understanding of such laws by the security services, you can imagine how it's different from France.
Internet is the only place left,at least it was the only place, where people could criticize United Russia party and discuss the current situation in the country.
Now a simple blog post like "Lets go protest our government" could be considered as advocating risky behavior, and as such get blocked by Government.
At least, the public outrage led to the exclusion of several extremely vague terms from the bill, like "information that might be harmful for children", so wikipedia blackout wasn't in vain, after all.
However, this showed us, once again, how incompetent our deputies are, when it comes to internet and technical stuff.
Source: Interview http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...