1,700 Websites In Russia Go Dark In SOPA-Style Protest 34
An anonymous reader writes "Russians are going nuts over a new anti-piracy law that enables Roskomnadzor (the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications) to 'blacklist' Internet resources before the issue of a court order. Indeed, 1700 websites have issued a blackout, just like U.S. firms did in protest at the Stop Online Piracy Act. The law, widely known as the Russian SOPA, has been slammed by some major tech firms from the country, including Yandex. Freedom of speech campaigners are worried it could be used for political censorship, while digital companies say it will slow down the development of Internet services in the country."
Re:Russia vs. Amerika (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what the civil courts are like, but the criminal courts are famous for their >99% conviction rate. They really do exist purely to rubber-stamp arrests. The police are often nice enough to invite visitors to pay a 'reinvestigation fee' to re-examine the case before charging though - if the bribe is to their satisfaction, the charges are dropped.
I would assume the civil courts are similar rubber-stamps for various government agencies: Say something insulting to Putin, and you can expect someone to go over your site looking for a quote you've repeated without permission to use as a pretext to block the site.
Re:Russia vs. Amerika (Score:2, Interesting)
The high conviction rates in Russia are due to the different court system. In Russia case brought to court by "Prokuratura" - a loose analog of State attorney in US. Prokuratura is separate from investigative branch of the police. In oversees police detectives and validates cases before they brought to the court. In the end, Prokuratura makes a decision if case going to reach the court or not. They are partially evaluated on the conviction rate.
Hence in court, Prokuratura argues state side it is their MAIN duty and in their best interest to insure that cases that reach courts are solid. This essentially results in the system where weak cases never see their day in court, which leads to the apparent high conviction rates for those that reach the court. Unlike US, where weak cases fall apart in courts in Russia they are dismissed by Prokuratura. Is it better or worse than US system is a different topic of discussion, but in reality the high conviction rates do not mean "rubber stamping" - they mean that weak cases are never tried.