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The upper house of the Russian Parliament passed a bill on Wednesday that the Russian IT industry believes has high potential to lead to Internet censorship.

The bill, including amendments to several laws, was adopted by the upper house of the Russian Parliament, the Federation Council of Russia. The adoption of the bill makes it easier to block sites that host child pornography, promote drugs and provide instructions about how to commit suicide, as well as other information that affects health and development, the Council said. In particular, the law includes the creation of mechanisms for the rapid removal of web pages that contain materials prohibited from circulation within Russia, the Council said.

IT companies in Russia however, have been warning that the law can have negative effects and lead to censorship because there is a risk that legal content can be blocked more easily too, mainly because it amends the law "On information, information technologies and information protection" to allow the blocking of websites through IP and DNS blockades.

It also looks as though Roskomnadzor, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, will gain the power to blacklist websites without a court's consent as of Nov. 1, Vladimir Medeyko, director of Wikimedia Russia, the organization that runs the local version of Wikipedia, said via instant message.

One of the amended laws leaves the opportunity to blacklist whole domains when only part of the hosted content is illegal. For instance 1.3 million blogs hosted on Blogger are blocked in Russia as a result of a court ruling that ordered the blocking of access to extremist blog posts, Google Russia said earlier this month. And in another lawsuit in 2010, a court ordered a local Internet provider to block the entire YouTube domain because the court deemed one of the hosted movies illegal, according to Google. The company said the new law is a threat for the Internet.

Presenting the bill to the Council, Senator Lyudmila Narusova said that the Internet community has certain worries, particularly regarding the risk of unjustified blacklisting of websites, and that it is necessary to constantly monitor enforcement of the amended law. However, she also pointed out that many European countries, including Germany and the U.K., and also the U.S. have certain mechanisms in place to block websites, adding that the fight against illegal information on Internet is strong in the world, a Council statement said.

Amendments to the law "On information, information technologies and information protection" should not have been made so hastily, said Vladimir Isaev, Manager of International Media Relations at Russian search engine Yandex, via email.

"Yandex is ready to accept official invitations to discuss the Bill or to commit our vision and opinion to government authorities," he said. The effects on the Russian online industry are hard to gauge at the moment, he said adding: "All of us are waiting for subordinate regulatory acts and regulation instructions."

The bill moved through the lower and upper house within a period of two weeks, giving the industry little time to protest the legislation. After Wikipedia became aware of the bill and its potential it decided to block access to its site for 24 hours. The English version of Wikipedia, along with websites including Reddit and Craigslist, conducted a similar protest against the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) by blocking access to their sites last January. Other Russian online businesses including Yandex, social network VK.com and the Russian version of Live Journal posted banners or blog posts to protest the bill.

These protests were followed by changes to the proposed amendments to legislation. Among the changes the Russian security service FSB (successor to the KGB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were excluded from the list of government bodies that would be allowed to blacklist sites, before the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, approved the bill, Medeyko said last week. Wikimedia Russia was also allowed to partake in a working group overseeing the bill and its implementations.

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Russian Parliament's Upper House Approves Internet 'censorship' Bill

A group known as the Internet Defense League will launch Thursday with a cat signal shining into the night sky and onto the buildings of several major cities. The IDL's goal? Efficiently fight off future Internet censorship legislation.

Hopefully this signal won't accidentally stir Batman from his slumber.

When Batman makes his triumphant return in "The Dark Knight Rises" at midnight on July 19, keep an eye on the evening skies if you live in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., or London for an illuminated "cat signal" spotlight.

The cat's face, similar to Batman's infamous bat signal, stands for the Internet Defense League, and symbolizes a team that acts like the Super Friends of Internet freedom. The IDL's slogan: "Make sure the Internet never loses. Ever."

Meow! (Click to enlarge.)

The amusing idea comes from Fight for the Future (and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit), a team that rallied 115,000 Web sites and 3 million e-mails to Congress to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Protect IP Act (PIPA), and other Internet censorship bills.

Building on previous successes, the group's latest project wields the support of Web sites and groups such as Mozilla, WordPress, Reddit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with "many more" to be announced at the official launch, according to the IDL's Web site. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) plan to attend Thursday's press conference publicly heralding the group, according to Adweek.

The IDL says it still needs many thousands of dollars to fund its goals, but the group told Crave it has enough to shine cat signals in San Francisco, Washington D.C, and New York. Interested parties can donate on a Kickstarter-style page that offers several benefits for small donations -- donate $30 and get a personal "cat signal torch light," for example. The group plans to host parties celebrating its launch at midnight in the aforementioned locales, as well as in an oddball additional location, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

"While the Internet Defense League idea was brewing, people started calling it 'a bat signal for the Internet,' and we ran with it," Holmes Wilson, one of the founders of Fight for the Future and a member of the IDL, told Wired of the decision to choose a cat as the symbol. "Except that if the Internet has a mascot, it's definitely a cat, not a bat."

The IDL hopes the cat signal brings awareness to the idea of quickly mobilizing people when the Internet faces major challenged, similar to an "Internet Emergency Broadcast System," says the IDL Web site. "With the combined reach of our Web sites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization," the site continues.

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Look in the sky! It's a 'cat signal' for Net freedom

July 12, 2012

Michael Harper for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

The Russian parliament yesterday unanimously decided to adopt a bill which allows them to exercise a greater control over the Internet. Now, many Russians are worried this is just the first step to widespread censorship by the Russian government.

Only one man stands between this bill and the law: Russias president, Vladimir Putin.

Similar to the Internet protests which occurred when the U.S. Government voted on bills SOPA and PIPA, some Russian websitessuch as search engine Yandex, LiveJournal, and the Russian version of Wikipediaused their sites as a platform to speak out against the new bill. The Russian Wikipedia, for example, went black once more in protest, warning visitors the bill could lead to the creation of a Russian analogue to Chinas great firewall.

The bills authors say the new measures would help crack down on offensive and troublesome sites, such as sites which feature child-pornography or sites which promote drug use and suicide. Should Putin sign this bill into law, the Russian Government would create a sort of federal blacklist for any site which is found to be outside of the regulations. The owners and operators of these blacklisted sites would be forced to take down and remove these sites.

Though this bill was unanimously passed through the Duma, Russias Parliament, the calls of the protestors may have been heard after all. For instance, according to the Guardian, MPs sought out and removed any vague language which could have been used to immediately shut down any site with the ambiguously defined bad content. The Duma instead opted to use more specific language, shutting down sites which contain child pornography, drug use or suicide. Any other site with questionable content would require a court-order before being placed on the blacklist and subsequently removed. If these websites cannot be taken down, the ISPs and hosting companies responsible for the site will be forced to take it down on their end.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev backed the law as he spoke to Radio Free Europe.

Peoples basic rights and freedoms must be upheld, including the right to information on the one hand and the right to be protected against harmful content on the other hand.

Those who oppose Putin have long feared that such a crackdown on the Internet could happen and now worry that this bill will be the final stop in between Putin and censorship.

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Will New Bill Bring Internet Censorship In Russia?

The Russian legislature's lower house on Wednesday adopted a bill that, according to tech companies in the country, could lead to Internet censorship.

The bill, which includes amendments to several current laws, still needs to be signed and in the meanwhile Russian tech companies continue to protest the legislation, trying to influence the political process before the bill is formally adopted by the upper house.

The bill passed by Russia's lower house, the State Duma, aims to make it easier to block sites that host child pornography, promote drugs or provide instructions about how to commit suicide. But the Russian IT industry sees a basis for Internet censorship because it is unclear how the blocking procedure will work.

The industry is mainly protesting the bill because the State Duma has proposed to block websites through IP and DNS blockades.

Despite approval of the law, Wikipedia Russia, the initiator of the protests that decided to block access to its own site in protest Tuesday, is mildly positive.

"Our protests had an effect," said Vladimir Medeyko, director of the Russian Wikimedia foundation, in an email. Although the protest did not have the same effect as the online upheaval against SOPA in the U.S. (the bill was put on ice), there nevertheless was an impact, Medeyko said.

Even though the bill was passed by the State Duma, several significant amendments were introduced the night before the vote, Medeyko said. The definition of illegal content became much clearer, and the list of authorities who may decide which sites can be blacklisted became shorter, he said. The FSB, Russia's successor of the KGB, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, were excluded from the list, he said. According to the latest draft of the law, Rostelecom, Russia's state-controlled telecommunications operator, is the only non-government body that can blacklist parts of Russia's Internet, said Medeyko.

In addition, the legislators agreed to include representatives of Wikipedia's parent organization, Wikimedia, in the working group overseeing the bill and its implementations, Medeyko said. This was a breakthrough, he said, since members of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC), an NGO that represents the Russian IT industry, were rejected at an earlier stage.

However, representatives from RAEC, and possibly also Wikimedia representatives, are to be included in a working group from the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media that will look at possible amendments to the law, Medeyko said.

He also emphasized that several key state officers, including Russian premier Dmitry Medvedev, explicitly stated that the Internet in Russia will remain "a territory of freedom," he said.

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Tech Companies Continue Protests After Russia Adopts Online 'censorship' Bill

Tineka Smith Published 13 July 2012

Russias legislative lower house adopted a new internet censorship bill that will allow the government to shut down any websites that has material it finds offensive.

According to news agency, Ria Novosti, websites that contain drug references, pornography, promote suicide or any ideas that might be "extremist" may be blacklisted.

A blacklist is already running with "extremist" materials banned from courts, some of which even include musical recordings and leaflets. The list has currently has around 1200 entries.

Websites that breach the law would have 24 hours to remove offensive material or face blacklisting. Internet service providers will also have to cooperate in blacklisting sites or they risk being blacklisted themselves.

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a statement that the bill is taking Russia in a "troubling and dangerous direction."

"The world's experience with the Internet provides a clear lesson: a free and open Internet promotes economic growth and freedom; restricting the free flow of information is bad for consumers, businesses, and societies.

The FCC Chair explained that he had attending the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia where he met with government officials in talks of expanding broadband access and promoting the Internet as a strong source for innovation, improved public services, and economic growth.

"A free open internet is essential to meeting these goals in Russia, as in all countries," said Genachowski. "Growing economies everywhere promote peace and stability. I believe this legislation will stifle investment in broadband and impede innovations that could advance Russia's promising internet economy."

Some of the most popular websites in Russia like Wikipedia, LiveJournal, and the search engine Yandex, went on strike Tuesday, warning users that their freedom on the Internet was at risk.

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Russian Duma approves internet censorship bill