A court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia has required a Russian ISP block access to YouTube because the site hosted
“Russia for Russians,”
which was rated to be an extremist video.
The court’s ruling also occurs to the Internet Archive and three online libraries, Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru, all of which were dicovered to host writings by Adolf Hitler.
With this decision, Russian authorities connect a long list of authorities that have blocked access to YouTube (YouTube) at some point or another, along with China, Brazil, Indonesia, Iran, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Thailand as will as the United Arab Emirates. YouTube material has also been quashed in the U.S. and U.K.
Frequently, these prohibitions are instituted because the videos on the familiar hosting site exhibit something a authority would rather its citizens not look, from state police barbarity at a protest to unflattering depictions of its command to “immoral” or sexual content.
Nevertheless, this particular decision stems less from a desire to safeguard a country’s internal PR and more from a wish to keep Russian media — along with citizen-generated and social media — free from the maybe harmful influences of ultranationalist, racist and xenophobic speech. The phrase
“Russia for Russians”
itself is a slogan of hatred utilized against the multi-ethnic society that exists in Russia now, and searching for the phrase “Россия для русских” on YouTube will revert a number of disturbing videos typical of the white nationalist movement around the world.
But intentions aside, this judgment still constitutes what many other authorities would consider a prohibition or limitation of free speech.
The owner of Rosnet, the ISP predisposed by today’s ruling, is Aleksandr Ermakov. He spoke to media now, saying basically that the court had thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
“All of mankind is using this website. And providers like ours do not violate Russian law. But we are still being forced to close the website so that our users can not log on and watch the videos. This is absurd! According to this logic, we have to demolish all buildings that have swastikas on the walls. Or when two people are discussing a bomb over the phone, we have to take away the phones from all people across Russia.”
More on Rosnet’s valid position can be dicovered at this website.
In fact, a Google (Google) rep told the Moscow Times,
“To limit access of Rosnet users to the whole YouTube.com site, not to a particular video, breaches the right for freedom of information, guaranteed by Article 29 of Russia’s Constitution.”
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