Russia's Internet Blacklist Law Takes Effect 119
another random user writes with this report from the BBC "A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia. The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial. The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July. If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material."
Sick of the "for the children" excuse. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Russia has the 4th highest alcohol consumption per capita in the world (behind Moldova, Czech Republic and Hungary - all former Soviet republics), with no laws specifying a minimum drinking age (minimum age to purchase is 18). Why not think of those children first if they're hell bent on making laws protecting children?
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Only Moldova was a former Soviet Republic. (The others were indeed Warsaw Pact countries, though).
Re:Sick of the "for the children" excuse. (Score:4, Informative)
Wow, your history knowledge is unbelievably messed up.
Moldova is indeed a former Soviet Union Republic. Others are not.
Also, minimum legal age to drink alcoholic beverages is usually 18. That applies to both purchase AND drinking itself. But, to be honest, even if laws do exist, they need to also be enforced, which doesn't really happen.
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Well, TFA says that a poll taken in July when the law was passed, shows that the Russian people support the blacklist 62% to 16%. The Russian government seems to have the support of the people on this issue.
That's always been a danger of democracy: it's very easy for the population to vote away their freedom, but once gone, it's not so easy to get it back.
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Well, TFA says that a poll taken in July when the law was passed, shows that the Russian people support the blacklist 62% to 16%. The Russian government seems to have the support of the people on this issue.
That's always been a danger of democracy: it's very easy for the population to vote away their freedom, but once gone, it's not so easy to get it back.
Yes, because polls are 100% accurate and never falsified to help those who have the power for the poll results to be falsified.
Russia is going back to a dictatorial government and the Russian population can do nothing about it.
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If you read a story about a poll in China where 90% or more of the Chinese people support censorship would you believe the poll?
I find all polls suspect, some more than others.
China likes censorship, no really. (Score:2)
Strangely enough, there might be some truth to such a result. I have spoken with Chinese nationals who say things like, 'Democracy and freedom is great, but it would never work over here.' I wonder if this is something in the character of Chinese people, or just a selfish, 'Of course censorship is good...for other people.' because t
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Now although there is are some poll numbers in this article, I'm linking this article for it's other content.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/01/us-russia-putin-idUSBRE8A01HA20121101 [reuters.com]
And yes, many Chinese believe that the censorship is good for them, or at least that is what they say, I though have never heard a Russian say the same.
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And yes, many Chinese believe that the censorship is good for them.
My guess is that not a few Americans would similarly object to child porn being openly displayed for sale in the supermarket. I'm not sure that there is a people where the majority does not believe that at least some level of censorship is good for them (even if they may not recognise it as such).
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As is the question of any evidence of the possible validity of the poll mentioned in TFA.
You cannot say one way or the other if it is or is not valid, that is one of the biggest problems with polls.
There are Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
Polls are Statistics.
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In that case put forth proof that it is valid.
Right now it is my word against your and you are nothing but an Anonymous Coward.
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Actually it was more so that polls are almost exclusively bullshit was the claim. You are the one that made it out to be Russian polls in particular
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Fine, I googled it, lots of hits, take your pick.
russian falsified polls.
I found this one rather entertaining.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2J-7OFxxgA [youtube.com]
If even the elections are rigged, are you going to believe a random poll in the media?
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What do you mean by "going back" ? We are already there.
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Russia? The land known for being the absolutely worst for polls? Where polls have greater than 100% turnout?
Excuse me if I'm extremely skeptical that even a single individual voted positively for a blacklist without being under political duress or physical coercion, let alone manipulation.
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Russia? The land known for being the absolutely worst for polls? Where polls have greater than 100% turnout?
Excuse me if I'm extremely skeptical that even a single individual voted positively for a blacklist without being under political duress or physical coercion, let alone manipulation.
Umm we're talking a privately conducted opinion poll. I'm extremely sceptical that private pollsters generally employ "undue political duress or physical coercion" ... except for Gallup of course.
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This is fucking Russia, caps. A country I would like to visit for my own reasons (heritage), but not one I'd ever defend.
You're really going to believe it's an independent opinion poll is declared as that, in a country where free speech is not allowed? Free speech doesn't guarantee a valid and legitimate independent opinion to be spoken, but a lack of free speech absolutely prevents that concept from existing.
I don't mean that Russia is 100% bad bad, but if you believe that any poll exists in Russia country
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You're really going to believe it's an independent opinion poll is declared as that.
If the poll comes from an organisation as reputable as the Levada Centre I will certainly presume it to be independent and free of coercion. If there is good evidence to suggest otherwise that presumption is, as always, rebuttable. However the onus of proof lie on the accuser. And in any case, is it that surprising that 62% of the population would want the "worst" sites on the web blocked?
Every bit as important as freed
Re:Sick of the "for the children" excuse. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, TFA says that a poll taken in July when the law was passed, shows that the Russian people support the blacklist 62% to 16%. The Russian government seems to have the support of the people on this issue.
Of course.
The Russian people is known to be very active in their support for their government.
In fact, in the last parliamentary elections, the voter turnout was up to 146% [wordpress.com].
You cannot argue with such numbers.
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You do realise that the progress towards free press has been dismantled by the Kremlin in recent years. The journalists are routinely brutally killed or disappeared, and their cases not investigated. So the Kremlin puts out whatever news it likes, even bizarre stuff, and there is no-one to challenge it. Reasonable people are presented with sets of facts designed to funnel their conclusion (yes this happens in the Free World, but there are alternative news sources counter-balancing the worst of it).
So it
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Ah, the usual bullshit coming out of Russia from someone who is sucking up the verifiably false information coming from the Kremlin-controlled news organizations. You can keep your country, thank you very much, we don't want it. We would like it to be that the citizens of your country are properly represented and the corruption and increasingly feudal system eradicated.
All I wish for Russia is the following:
* independent judiciary (which Russia does not have have)
* the Rule of Law (which Russia d
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The more serious criticism of your comment is:
1) I do not care if personally you take any steps to support those in Russia who want more rights. But when you hire the Government of the U.S. to do that
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Privet :)
Please note, I'm not a US citizen. I see the flaws in the US system as clearly as you do. However, that doesn't mean when I compare the flawed US system with the flawed Putin regime to me it seems clear which system needs the most work done to correct it.
I have zero problem with strong Russian statehood - provided it is not a bully to its neighbours (yes, yes, that goes for all countries, including the US, China etc). However, a strong Russia is still consistent with the Rule of Law; independe
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1) Public opinion polls, including independent ones by the Levada-Center, very pretty close to the official elections results. Which makes allegations of fraud dubious for me. I prefer to trust statistics, than emotions. The elections were free and fair -- for me; as a 1986-born, I've seen no better. Sorry. And if you want some scholarly opinion, look no farther than Stephen Cohen: "though these elections were not free and fair, they were the freest and fairest in 15 years" http://www.democr [democracynow.org]
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"though these elections were not free and fair, they were the freest and fairest in 15 years"
is exactly akin to the classic, "he has stopped beating his wife, but it is ok because he only beats her once per day". Just because the vote is less rigged than before still doesn't make the elections "free and fair" (which were your contraditory words earlier in the paragraph). I applaud the progress, but don't think just because there is progress that the regime should be let off the hook. Without pressure it is too easy to stand still or go backwards. This is the vital social function that Pussy Riot an
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Man I'm getting senile. Here's a link to the (academic, non-poltical) video I mentioned. I hope it provides some insight into what outsiders see as going on in your political system:
Global Awareness Lecture - Putinism and Russia's Political Dead End
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOcqdeW7xO8 [youtube.com]
Here's the great Christopher Hitchens with a slightly different view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS_tjw5psUE [youtube.com]
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"Think differently."
Another backward contry goes crazy over internet. (Score:3)
How come this is news to anyone?
Re:Another backward contry goes crazy over interne (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Another backward contry goes crazy over interne (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we all hoped that Russia would stop being backwards, and here we have Russia taking backwards to a whole other level.
The Russian people had a chance at freedom, but they lost it.
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Ah yes, this is how it starts. It's for the children, we say. We put up cameras in the street. This is for the children. We allow unwarranted searches. This is for the children. We must stop all depraved content from poisoning our children's minds. And before we realize it, we are once again ensnared in tyranny.
How long before the state's power, unchecked, begins to run amok? How long before the safety of the children becomes the safety of the state? Not long, I'd wager. Enjoy your child's safety
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Your mistakenly assume that russian people want freedom in the first place. 500 years of their history suggest otherwise.
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Freedom is not their first priority for sure. However, no one wants to be a serf and to suggest otherwise is ridiculous. Look at the hundreds of thousands of people who were out in subzero temperatures until Putin's regime changed protest laws to raise absolutely repressive fines.
The Russian elite do not want freedom, and they control the media so that is what you hear. It is very clear the Russian people (particularly urbanites) do want personal and political freedom. We should support them and not repe
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Just because a people have been subjugated that does not mean they want to be subjugated.
Also the length of subjugation doesn't determine if those subjugated want freedom or not.
If you were locked in prison would you want someone else saying that you don't want out because you have been there X number of years?
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Do not forget that there was not Renaissance in Russia. Mentality and culture of large swaths of population is still medieval at best.
Just 2 - 3 decades ago it was worse that North Korea. Now it begins to resemble remotely something habitable.
Coming soon to the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
"for the children"
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Actually, in this case America was the first.
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"for the children"
That means everyone who is not in charge of Government, because after all, we are just children who need guidance.
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When will people learn? (Score:1)
As long as you have the net you can't really block portions of it.
Fuck Vladimir Putin and his commie-pedo friends (Score:2, Funny)
... Will they ban slashdot for this?
first on the list (Score:5, Insightful)
In Putins's Russia, government fucks pussy.
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Um,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/quotes [imdb.com]
Guy in Bar: See, there's three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn't fuck the assholes, you know what you'd get? You'd get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit!
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And then there is Jamie Lee Curtis
No surprise... (Score:1)
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The US government has already done that, hell you can read all about it on the frontpage of slashdot with a story about kim dotcom and how his website was shut down by the US government 'because they felt like it'.
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Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
Is this part of (Score:5, Interesting)
The UN takeover of the Internet? Or just a portent of the way things will work in the future?
Clippy says "I see you're trying to access a site that we think you shouldn't. Would you like me to report you to the authorities?"
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Russia (and others) are pushing for ITU/UN regulation of the Internet (rather than the US). It is so Russia's internet policy can be applied to the whole of the Internet (rather than having pesky off-shore sites tell the uncomfortable truth).
Don't give the
In the first place... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no second place.
What's next? Make the internet safe for babies and kittens?
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This was inevitable (Score:2)
The means by which the Russian government wants to do this are well... Russian: I say you do. However, this was a long time coming, there's a lot of stuff coming out of there that well is actually illegal there and in the rest of the world: hacking stuff, child porn, warez sites. I don't think they've done much towards trying to control it, and the thing with Russia is even though they pass this law now, doesn't mean they're going to enforce it with due diligence like they do here in the states. Time wil
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.... doesn't mean they're going to enforce it using unconstitutional methods like they do here in the states.
Fixed that for ya....
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However, this was a long time coming, there's a lot of stuff coming out of there that well is actually illegal there and in the rest of the world: hacking stuff, child porn, warez sites
The government has no intention of going after their side businesses.
This is going to work well (Score:3)
They have some of the best web programmers there and a healthy disregard for the authority. I see so many holes appearing on the Berlin Firewall that it will be more of a joke than the Chinese version.
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"I see so many holes appearing on the Berlin Firewall that[...]"
You do know that Berlin is in Germany, right? We're talking about Russia here.
Re:This is going to work well (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed, my young friend, though the Berlin Wall was built by East Germany which was a Soviet puppet state.
A better pun would be the Tinfoil Curtain, to harken back to the Iron Curtain of old.
Even then, people were able to listen to shortwave stations from the West, despite jamming. The current attempt is bound to failure, it will cause inconvenience at worst and breed more dissent.
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I knew the world was going down the tubes when I was working on a computer in a social studies class at the high school. The teacher was talking about the elections in Russia. At one point, a teenage girl near the front raises her hand and asks: "Where is Russia? Thats like... in South America, isn't it?"
What scared me was not that the girl asked the question but that she did not get laughed out of the class by nearly as many of her classmates and she should have.
Like we give a f*ck. (Score:1)
--P2P, Tunnels.
great extortion opportunity (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone think the Russian system is immune to manipulation for profit?
You want your web company to succeed, you pay the man or go offline.
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Well a commentator once put it something like this (in Putin's feudal system or personal patronage):
"There is not just corruption in the system, corruption *is* the system!"
Don't hand over our Internet to these turkeys, meaning, don't surrender the Net to the ITU/UN.
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I thought Russia of all countries would have been a bit smarter than that. You know, taken a higher road to dealing with such content.
Do you know anything about Russia's history, or of Putin's? This isn't going to be used for sites hosting child porn, or scams, or hackers. This law is about stifling dissent. Putin is trying to bring Russia back to where it was in the days of the Soviet Union.
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Russia has had a bad suicide problem, but it is getting better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Russia [wikipedia.org]
In 2008, suicide claimed 38,406 lives in Russia.[22] With a rate of 27.1 suicides per 100,000 people, Russia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, although it has been steadily decreasing since it peaked at around 40 per 100,000 in the mid-late 90s,[23] including a 30% drop from 2001 to 2006. In 2007 about 22% of all suicides were committed by people aged 40â"49, and almost six times as many Russian males commit suicide than females.[24] Heavy alcohol use is a significant factor in the suicide rate, with an estimated half of all suicides a result of alcohol abuse. This is evident by the fact that Russia's suicide rate since the mid-90s has declined along-side per capita alcohol consumption, despite the economic crises since then; alcohol consumption is more of a factor than economic conditions
Let me guess - (Score:2)
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Of course, everybody knows they are paedophile hangouts. OK, Myspace has a chance to get overlooked, since nobody cares about it anymore.
Facing recent waves of protest, some Russian officials have shared a shocking revelation: much of the "inciting" commentary was published on servers hosted in the U.S.! They are live relics, looking at our world and trying to reconnect it with their bygone era.
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Having a US hosting provider or the protections of the 1st amendment didn't protect the director of “Innocence of Muslims".
I'd say, publishing a wacky hateful movie did not give him a license to violate the terms of his parole.
Bigger than any of those three in Russia: (Score:2)
Yet another piece in the domino falls (Score:1)
I for one shall watch with grim satisfaction as Vladimir Putin, the Supreme Leader engages in yet another "Because I say so" rule.
Looking forward to the return of the good old days when people were willing to risk their lives to escape the chilling embrace of mother Russia.
*plays old soviet army "hits"*
Men, you are serving Vladimir Putin. No other army in the world can make that statement, think about it...
In Novo-Soviet Russia... (Score:1)
... you are all children of Tsar Vladimir.
Not much different from US of A (Score:5, Insightful)
As for "save the children" argument that Russians used, I believe pretty much the same argument was used to give US law enforcement power to prosecute child pornography cases. It is hard to argue that government had some other intentions, but if it Russians...then of course they have to be different and have to have an ulterior motive.
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FBI probably needs a judge's assent somewhere, yeah? That means a judge can always go "No" to the FBI, so the FBI do have to have a reason for site takedown that will pass the reasonableness test of a judge (assuming the latter is doing their job). That is why the Big Media takedown notices for copyright infringement that bypass this process are so insidious (and why Google is fairly heroic at resisting most of the requests, eg that stupid Mohammed video; despite many other providers caving in without res
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Most Russian ISPs will be implementing DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) to block the content. We're not talking DNS anymore here, we're talking ISPs inspecting and logging everything you send over the wire unencrypted. Be careful about what you type in Google now, the russian Register is watching.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/russia-surveillance/all/ [wired.com]
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