
Russia Blocks Porn Site Brazzers for 'Damaging Human Psyche' - spaceboy
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russia-blocks-porn-site-brazzers-for-damaging-human-psyche-57065
======
alex_duf
But beating your wife is fine apparently
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/30/russia...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/30/russia-
decriminalise-domestic-violence-laws)

~~~
googletazer
Did you just assume who is getting beaten in the relationship?

~~~
trhway
he didn't assumed. He just knows it like any person who knows Russia.
[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21474931](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-21474931) ,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_Russia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_in_Russia)

"... every year. ..., 14,000 die from injuries inflicted by husbands or
partners. ..."

------
mrweasel
At the same time Russia is the go to country for hosting "revenge porn" sites
and image forums with stolen nude photos. Because that wouldn't damage the
psyche of anyone?

Fine if you decide that porn is bad, I don't agree, but that's something the
Russians need to work out for themself. It's the blatant lying and use of
double standards that annoys me.

~~~
Strom
It's standard practice for Russia to do things for one reason and give a
completely unrelated official reason as excuse.

I'm not too familiar with the specifics of this case, but I can easily imagine
this just being a case of nationalist protection. In that they want people to
go to local Russian porn outlets that can be better controlled, tracked &
monetized. Then again, it could also be something as simple as some Russian
official being pissed off and on a personal vendetta mission.

~~~
xentronium
Russian laws effectively prohibit all kinds of internet pornography. More
precisely, they restrict "unlawful distribution of pornography", but never
define any "lawful" way to do so.

\---

That said, if it weren't pornography, small rant about our judicial system:

Any judge in any city pop 50000 can issue a country-wide block for any site.
Often these resolutions are too far reaching, sometimes they order to block
root page (/) instead of specific page (/foo/bar), rendering whole sites
unavailable. Sometimes they ban ip addresses of aws services, disrupting half
the internet.

Another important thing about these hearings is that there is often no
defendant. They might call in the site hoster, but hosters are never
interested in defending their customers so they simply ignore the subpoena.
Site owner would often discover their site was blocked after the fact.

Finally, in many cases judges don't even bother writing their own verdict.
Instead they copy-paste whatever public attorney cooked up, including all the
factual and orthographic errors, and sign it.

[https://medium.com/@aalien/law-
limits-8d733178e158](https://medium.com/@aalien/law-limits-8d733178e158) this
is a very insightful post (alas, only available in Russian) from @aalien,
founder of lurkmore.ru, which is arguably the most often banned site in
Russia, about how this horrible system functions (or rather, malfunctions). I
found this excerpt especially hilarious:

«Full list of Roskomnadzor-banned pages is available on our site.
Unfortunately, that page is also banned by Roskomnadzor, because it contains
"textual information about committing suicide". It's in the quoted
Roskomnadzor letter, of course»

------
balabaster
While I might find a lot niches of porn a little distasteful... or a lot
distasteful in some cases, I think they're reaching a bit. Surely the kinds of
people visiting these sites are already interested in seeing this kind of
stuff... and thus are already 'damaged'. I feel like the cause and effect is
being reversed somehow. Perhaps that's just me.

Edit for clarification: I used the word 'damaged' in reference to the parent
post, it was not a word of my own choosing.

~~~
dajohnson89
There is a large amount of anecdotal evidence that pornography has been at
least a contributing factor in ruining relationships. Moreover, arguments can
be made that even at the individual level, viewing of pornography is (1)habit-
forming, (2)distort one's views/expectations of sex & intimacy.

I think censorship of any form is very stupid. This one included. However the
notion that porn can sometimes be bad is not unfounded. Even vanilla porn,
let's leave the sick/twisted stuff aside. Excepting illegal things like child
porn & bestiality I doubt any consensus can be reached as to what is
considered distasteful.

~~~
tps5
I agree. You could make the argument that pornography damages people's lives.
Of course that doesn't mean the state has the right to censor it.

By the same token, I wonder if an argument could be made that the availability
of free internet pornography has led to a decrease in sexual
assaults/violence/rape. I know of no research into this, but it's not a
totally implausible argument on the face of it.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
You are correct. The linked source claims that sexual assault rates have
halved since the early 90s.

Of course, correlation != causation, but 50% is a huge amount and it overlaps
quite neatly with the growth of the internet.

[https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-
problem](https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem)

------
neilellis
Repressive regimes are also somewhat damaging to the psyche. Just saying.

~~~
chroem-
I'm not trying to defend Russia, but the UK is trying to do this too. Well,
actually they've already done it.

~~~
thenomad
No, they're in the process of doing it right now.

The Digital Economy Bill is currently in the Lords. It's actually going to the
Committee Stage tomorrow.

That's the bill that will force age verification (with security implications
subsequently) as well as banning "non-conventional" pornography in the UK.

You can read more over at ORG:
[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-
bi...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/)

And if you'd like to write to a Lord on the issue:
[https://www.writetothem.com/lords](https://www.writetothem.com/lords)

~~~
tomjen3
Writing to a politician is already very inefficient, given that the lords have
life terms, would they even care?

~~~
dragonwriter
Well, for one thing, the Lords as presently constituted being instrumental in
something that is later see as important to the nation but on which the
Commons alone would have failed is fuel for the argument against abolishing
the Lords, further eroding their role, or replacing them with an elected body,
which seems to get proposed every few years.

------
jesuslop
Why that site and not others.

~~~
revicon
From the article... "The move follows Roskomnadzor’s decision to blacklist
adult video site Pornhub in September 2016."

~~~
CaptSpify
I think the question is still valid though: Why these sites?

There are _sooo_ many porn sites out there, that blocking just a couple seems
like a waste of time.

~~~
r721
Explanation from Anton Nosik
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Nosik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Nosik)):

"To understand the logic behind those obviously absurd and inefficient bans,
one should look deep into the very essence of the "checklist system" (палочная
система in Russian). Once there's a law in place, requiring the police, the
prosecution, the courts, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of
Communications to find and censor "bad" websites, it means that they have to
find and ban some URLs every other month, just for the record. It does not
matter much, whether those sites are actually bad, or how many million other
sites do carry the same content, but haven't been included in the current
version of filtering blacklists. There is only one relevant KPI for every
single official in the chain: a checklist, showing how many sites they've
blocked in every given month.

There is one district prosecutor in Ufa, who initiates the whole judicial
process of blocking Russian copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf online, one mirror
at a time. For every copy there's ample paperwork, starting from police
investigators, who conduct primary finding of fact, then the district
prosecutor's office, that petitions the district court to ban the copy in
question. The court passes its ruling, citing the URL as stated in the filing.
Then the Ministry of Justice in Moscow enters the URL into Extremist
Materials' List, and Ministry of Communications updates its Banned Websites'
Registry. Even before the cycle is completed (usually takes 2 to 6 months),
the process reopens with another copy of same book, on a different URL. Five
years since the initial inclusion of Hitler's manifest in the federal
Extremist Materials' List, which is today, there are still some 300 copies of
Mein Kampf in Russian, freely accessible online, and five years from now,
there will probably be 3000. But every single civil servant, involved in the
blocking process, duly receives his salaries, promotions and other benefits of
government service, as long as he doesn't forget to submit the updated
checklist to his superiors. That's how this system works, and there is
absolutely no point in trying to evaluate its efficiency in conventional terms
of common sense or public good."

[http://dolboeb.livejournal.com/2843155.html](http://dolboeb.livejournal.com/2843155.html)

------
imaginenore
And unblocks YouPorn on the same day.

Source:

[https://twitter.com/roscomnadzor/status/828984752476651523](https://twitter.com/roscomnadzor/status/828984752476651523)

------
amelius
Probably both are damaging, but what is more damaging, violent video games or
porn?

~~~
JanneVee
For an adult that has a fully formed identity and personality. Probably very
little damage can be incurred from either.

~~~
gahahaha
So what is the implication from the fact that it is impossible to block porn
for people who are not "an adult that has a fully formed identity and
personality"?

~~~
JanneVee
It is called "parenting", people should do more of it.

~~~
gahahaha
Not too easy if you're working two jobs to provide for your family. By giving
all the responsibility to the family you sacrifice those vulnerable children
who weren't as fortunate as yourself growing up.

~~~
JanneVee
So society doesn't need to fix the "two jobs" problem but society needs to
help with parenting instead including filtering porn of the interwebs?

~~~
gahahaha
I think we both realize that solving the two job problem is much harder. Hands
off government and giving people the freedom to fuck up their life is great
for middle class kids in super supportive families, but can be disastrous for
less fortunate children.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I think we both realize that solving the two job problem is much harder.

No, it's not harder than solving the problem of how you let the government
substitute for absent parents without creating a regime that exerts
authoritarian control of the adult population through its control of content.

------
crispyambulance
OK... but since when has Russia been moralistic about anything? Some of the
nastiest most immoral webhosts on the planet ever have operated out of Russia
for years.

Could this be Russian purveyors pulling strings to get "the competition" shut-
out locally on some comically absurd moral pretext?

~~~
senthil_rajasek
At least since Tolstoy.

------
rasz_pl
not about pron, its about control and making sure everyone breaks some kind of
law and can be broken/coerced

------
rm_-rf_slash
If you start to debate the merits or costs of porn to the human psyche, you've
already lost.

Delegitimization and criminalization of vice is an old, old, old, old, old
trick in the book to stir people up against a "degenerate" "other" as a means
to engineer their consent for their leaders to accumulate power and wealth.

It also provides a convenient way for dissidents to be delegitimized or
arrested when police "find" (i.e. plant) evidence of drugs/porn/what-have-you.
Old trick, works as well today as it has for thousands of years.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Inevitably anti-pornography laws are enforced more harshly against more
vulnerable groups.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Same with drug laws under Nixon/Reagan/Duerte.

