Court Banned YouTube in Russia’s Far East for Extremist Video

VLADIVOSTOK. July 29. VOSTOK-MEDIA – Rosnet, an Internet service provider based in the Russian Far East, intends to appeal the ruling of the Kmsomlsk-on-Amur court to block access to Youtube and four other websites for hosting content with extremist elements.

The court ruling came after a video entitled “Russia for Russians”, an extremist slogan used against multi-ethnic society, was posted on YouTube. The court ruled that the Internet provider shall bear responsibility for the content of websites even if the company does not own these sites.

In addition, on 16 July Komsomolsk-on-Amur Court ordered Rosnet to block access to on-line libraries, Lib.rus.ec, Zhurnal.ru, Thelib.ru and Web.archive.org which hosts an archive of indexed websites, many of which have been deleted.

The legal suit with the demand to block access to the websites was filed by the city prosecutor Vladimir Pakhomov. He said that following an investigation it was found that the websites contain materials deemed in Russia to be extremist, namely the video “Russia for Russians”, a slogan of hatred used against the multi-ethnic society, posted on YouTube and Adolf Hitler’s writings available to public on the on-line libraries.

Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ was judged to be extremist writing by Ufa Court in March this year. Up until then there were no legal grounds for prohibiting the book for sale, despite the fact that under Russian law “On Countering Extremist Activity” all writings of Nazi Party leadership shall be considered to be extremist.

GZT.ru cited Sergei Shushkanov, a telecommunication engineer at Rosnet as saying that the prosecutor invited Rosnet representatives and asked them if they intended to block access to the websites, on which they found extremist writings and the video.

“We said that we see no legal grounds for blocking access to these sites and that we have nothing to do with them,” Sergei said. “The prosecutors argued that we are an Internet service provider and therefore we should ban such sites. After that meeting, the prosecutor filed a case to the court.”

Sergei Shushkanov said Rosnet insisted that there is no such law in Russia that forbids a provider to give access to the content hosted by any third party. What is more the court’s ruling to block access is technically unfeasible. However, the court ignored these arguments.

Under the law “On Countering Extremist Activity”, dissemination, production or possession with the aim of dissemination of extremist materials in Russia is prohibited and entails liability. At present, there are about 700 materials, including books, articles, songs, websites and blogs that are deemed to be extremist, according to the law.