Court in Eastern Russia bans YouTube

Despite controls on other forms of media, Internet content has always been relatively unrestricted in Russia. But a recent court ruling in Russia’s far east suggests that that may be starting to change: The Komsomolsk-on-Amur City Court said Rosnet, a Khabarovsk region Internet provider, must block three online libraries — Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru — ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Despite controls on other forms of media, Internet content has always been relatively unrestricted in Russia. But a recent court ruling in Russia's far east suggests that that may be starting to change:

Despite controls on other forms of media, Internet content has always been relatively unrestricted in Russia. But a recent court ruling in Russia’s far east suggests that that may be starting to change:

The Komsomolsk-on-Amur City Court said Rosnet, a Khabarovsk region Internet provider, must block three online libraries — Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru — as well as YouTube.com and Web.archive.org, which stores archived copies of old and deleted web pages.

YouTube.com was banned for the nationalist video "Russia to Russians," which was ruled extremist by a Samara court in November and subsequently placed on the Justice Ministry’s federal list of banned extremist materials.

The other four sites contained Adolf Hitler’s "Mein Kampf," blacklisted by an Ufa court in March….

Russia’s courts have banned web sites in the past, but this is the first time that a prominent foreign site such as YouTube has come under fire.

Google, YouTube’s parent company, protested the decision but said it will not challenge it in court. Interestingly, as the Moscow Times notes, this ruling will also have the unintended effect of blocking the YouTube channel set up by Russia’s tech-savvy president. 

 

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

Tag: Russia

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