The Russian parliament has just passed a new law to set fines for Internet service providers (ISPs) who fail to restrict access to blacklisted websites.
ISPs that do not block banned sites according to the rulings of the state regulator Roskomnadzor will be required to pay up to a 100,000-ruble (approximately $1,700 at the current exchange rate) penalty. Public officials and entrepreneurs will face fines of 5,000 rubles ($86) 30,000 rubles ($519), respectively, for failing to implement Roskomnadzor’s instructions.
Under previous legislation ISPs were legally required to restrict access to banned sites, but no punishments were set out for those who fail to comply, writes The Moscow Times.
More than 60,000 sites or pages are currently blocked in Russia. Among them are DailyMotion, Linkedin and Pornhub, as East-West Digital News reported previously.
In its latest annual report “Internet Freedom in 2016: Under martial law,” Russian NGO Agora registered 24,000 cases in which some form of online content was banned in the course of last year.
However, Russian Internet users can unblock banned content using special browser plugins, VPN services, or such distributed networks as TOR, I2P and ONION. Some of these solutions are being advertised even on the webpage of the official register of blocked websites.
