Russia bans two large internet "fun-time" sites

[Thaldor]

[I'm not sure if it's okay to post this here and is it streching the community standards, but if it isn't okay: I'm sorry]

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37373244

 

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Russia's media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has blocked access to two of the world's largest pornography websites.

So, PornHub and YouPorn were banned in Russia and CIS region.

 

People always laugh at Chinas internet censorship, but Russia also has quite wide internet censoring, mostly they censor sites that contain material that is seen as critical to Kremlin, advocating sexual minorities and other material that is seen "flammable" by Russia's censor authority Roskomnadzor. Censorship in Russia isn't anywhere as wide as in China, but it's even more vague and random. In the past Russia has banned Wikipedia for short time over article about cannabis smoking and later over article about Charas (first only the article on Russian Wikipedia was banned, but later it escalated to ban the whole Wikipedia because it uses HTTPS which causes Russian ISPs censor technology cesor the whole site), GitHub over some satiric notes about suicide methods over which Russian software developers lost their minds, the Internet Archive over archiving sites that are " extremism" (also in this case the whole banning of Internet Archive was because using HTTPS) and in January 2016 Russia banned archive.is over material about annexation of Crimea (again whole site was banned because using HTTPS).

 

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"Blocking porn is the fastest way to ensure widespread adoption of censorship circumvention in your country," said Eva Galperin, global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This is very much right. Here in FInland we have some sort of "blacklist" of websites which most of the ISPs use. It was made for censoring child pornography, later Matti Nikki listed two-thirds of these banned sites (all the sites not containing CP) and with this critization Nikki's site was also banned (because his site had hyperlinks to the sites that were unlawfully banned). This was kind of a big deal in Finnish media and it had a lot of discussion going about internet censorship, but in the end Finnish vice Parliamentary Ombudsman found that the blacklisted sites included CP at the time when Finnish police investigated them, so banning them was legal, he also founded that the system is problematic for free speech and the nature of internet and swifting webdomains make the matter even more problematic and these matters should be taken into consideration when the law is overseen.

 

In the funny side of the news, it's always nice to see, probably, PornHub still being the same PornHub that can make some really good jokes:

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One of the affected porn sites offered Roskomnadzor a premium subscription to its service, in exchange for lifting the ban.

 

The government agency said it was "not in the market" for such an offer.

 

In this matter I'm very mych with Rita from Status Report (https://ritastatusreport.live/2016/09/15/pornhub-banned-in-russiacis-region/):

Quote

 

I also think that any kind of censorship in internet is wrong, because it will always have collateral victims and it will always turn out to be political. With political I don't mean as straight as it is in Russia, China and any other coutries that use real political censorship, but the small things like cutting out 10 minutes out of a documentary because that part isn't in line with political views of teh country (this acctually happened in Finnish nation TV during time when there was a lot of discussion about legalazing weed and YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) displayed BBC documentary about weed which was shorter than the original documentary because "it was too long to be shown at that moment" and somehow "oddly" cutted out part was the part where they discussed about weeds use as medicine). In the cases of CP and other extremely bad and illegal things there should be police organization that would handle the criminals (I belive Interpol already has something like this). National censorship or even continenal censorship isn't solving the problems it is just sweeping the problem under the carpet and putting it out of sight, out of mind.

[The Benjamins]

If I lived in Russia that would make me a sad panda.

[carzacc]

I get TV censorship, it happens all the time here in Italy, but Internet censorship is not always a great idea, it easily catches the attention of the citizens and over time it can cause them to be even more doubtful about their government IMO

[Sacredsock]

I will not deny that the internet occasionally needs censorship, maybe policing is a better word, but the internet transcends political boundaries and as such should not be censored by nation states.

And that applies to more than just the pr0nz

[Praesi]

I am against any kind of censorship.

[Delicieuxz]

Sounds like Russia still has RedTube.

 

I just don't think this part of the OP is accurate:

 

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mostly they censor sites that contain material that is seen as critical to Kremlin

 

I read that claim in Wikipedia, and the only linked reference was to an obviously amateur partisan website making far-reaches to select instances of censorship that didn't particularly fit the description of "Kremlin critical". Also, Russia's government directly funds some Russian news organizations that are basically 24/7 attack stations against the Kremlin, and Putin, so it doesn't seem to me like the Kremlin has issues with tolerating criticism domestically.

 

Also, the Moscow Times news station is pretty perpetually highly critical of Putin and the Kremlin's policies, and they're allowed to operate without hindrance.

[Coaxialgamer]

Love that tank pic

[Thaldor]

7 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

-snip-

I firstly included that part because it was in the BBC article, but as I looked over the "Internet censorship in Russia" article in Wikipedia, I thought it's quite a good way to put it. That's because by the few examples in Wikipedia and with some googling around Russia seems to be really into blocking news and everything about the Crimea situation and corruption. That's acctually quite a good example of political censorship. Even if the censored sites are made by some lunatics or partisans or even terrorists it's not acceptable in my eyes to censor them, because it shows that the goverment is ready to block even easily bypassed lies and misinformation and with that the goverment clearly shows that it may also censor real information that is harmful for it. And in case of Russia, they are even going so far as to censor the sites that just archieve internet and even some sites that aren't even close of those:

 

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After a Russian consumer protection watchdog OZPP published a warning for Russian tourists about possibility of being denied EU visas after visiting Crimea, explaining that from the international law point of view Crimea is an occupied territory, Roskomnadzor blocked the OZPP website "for threatenting territorial integrity of Russian federation". From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia

 

Also the Human Rights Watch has stated (in 2009 World Report) that Russia has selective censorship over all of the media. And in the Press Freedom Index Russia is quite far down on the list (2016 numbers Russia is 148th out of 180 countries listed, https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2016,). So, it's quite well possible that there's no press freedome in Russia and even though some companies look like they are critical towards the goverment, we cannot be sure is it only a play to show that Russia would have freedome of speech (that's what they say). And if they are doing that in Russian media they are very probably doing that in the internet also.

 

But I'm no expert on Russia, I haven't ever even visited Russia. For these kind of news I really encourage people to learn how to read media, because before I read that BBC article I didn't even know that Russia is sencoring internet, although I knew that Russia has some media censoring going on (that's kind of discussion topic in Finland always because Russia is so close and it's quite hard to know if some news about Russia come from the goverment of Russia or from some independent source).

[TheRandomness]

1 hour ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Love that tank pic

T-34-85 <3

Also, statusreport = WoT with Russians.

[Doobeedoo]

Why is there even any kind of censorship anyway, specially something like this. Yes you can see gore everywhere in news and movies in UHD no problem and it's also glorified.

[ShadowCaptain]

well there go my plans for living in Russia 

[Ubleron]

It's funny because amount of russian porn sites is greater than anywhere else.

[IAEInferno]

12 hours ago, Praesi said:

I am against any kind of censorship.

Japanese porn would make you depressed then.

[Delicieuxz]

14 hours ago, Thaldor said:

I firstly included that part because it was in the BBC article, but as I looked over the "Internet censorship in Russia" article in Wikipedia, I thought it's quite a good way to put it. That's because by the few examples in Wikipedia and with some googling around Russia seems to be really into blocking news and everything about the Crimea situation and corruption. That's acctually quite a good example of political censorship. Even if the censored sites are made by some lunatics or partisans or even terrorists it's not acceptable in my eyes to censor them, because it shows that the goverment is ready to block even easily bypassed lies and misinformation and with that the goverment clearly shows that it may also censor real information that is harmful for it. And in case of Russia, they are even going so far as to censor the sites that just archieve internet and even some sites that aren't even close of those:

 

 

Also the Human Rights Watch has stated (in 2009 World Report) that Russia has selective censorship over all of the media. And in the Press Freedom Index Russia is quite far down on the list (2016 numbers Russia is 148th out of 180 countries listed, https://rsf.org/en/ranking/2016,). So, it's quite well possible that there's no press freedome in Russia and even though some companies look like they are critical towards the goverment, we cannot be sure is it only a play to show that Russia would have freedome of speech (that's what they say). And if they are doing that in Russian media they are very probably doing that in the internet also.

 

But I'm no expert on Russia, I haven't ever even visited Russia. For these kind of news I really encourage people to learn how to read media, because before I read that BBC article I didn't even know that Russia is sencoring internet, although I knew that Russia has some media censoring going on (that's kind of discussion topic in Finland always because Russia is so close and it's quite hard to know if some news about Russia come from the goverment of Russia or from some independent source).

Some of that information is very problematic:

 

1. (Concerning the sub-quote that says " After a Russian consumer protection watchdog OZPP published a warning for Russian tourists about possibility of being denied EU visas after visiting Crimea, explaining that from the international law point of view Crimea is an occupied territory")

 

The international law view regarding Crimea is that the right to self-determination of a people is an enshrined fundamental right (2), which is also held as a primary principle in the UN charter. And since more than a half-dozen pre, and post-2014-Crimean-referendum polls, conducted by international pollsters and independent groups, have confirmed the 2014 Crimean referendum results as being the authentic will of the Crimean people, the result is therefore protected by international law. It is only certain, though a significant number, of governments which don't like the outcome of the referendum (because it thwarts NATO's geopolitical plan to absorb Ukraine and strategically-important Crimea into NATO), and so those groups oppose the outcome on pouty-child grounds. And the accusations of those governments, that Crimea's secession violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, and Ukraine's constitution, is just them playing stupid, because...

 

A) Ukraine's territorial integrity had already become violated, by the coup which the USA spent $5 billion to cause

B) there no longer was any territory of Ukraine to preserve the integrity of, since all legal and technical definitions of Ukraine disappeared when Ukraine's former president nullified Ukraine's constitution in order to cede control to the coup

 

So, as much as certain governments don't like it, Russia, nor Crimea did anything law-violating concerning Crimea's secession from Ukraine, the 2014 Crimean referendum, and Crimea's accession to Russia. International law actually grants full protection of Crimea's right to self determination as being a fundamental pillar of international law, and, rather than violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Russia actually, after Ukraine's territorial integrity was defunct, preserved the largest part of former-Ukraine which didn't accept the violation of Ukraine's territorial integrity, and spared Crimea from the violence that the rest of former-Ukraine has fallen into following the overthrow of its democratically-elected government.

 

 

2. Reporters Without Borders, who creates the Press Freedom Index, is funded by “US organizations strictly linked with US foreign policy,” and has a long history of being openly biased in favour of Europe and the USA, and openly biased against the geopolitical rivals of Europe and the USA. Their press-freedoms report is largely a geopolitical propaganda tool, and extension of the political views of the USA and Europe:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/may/19/pressandpublishing.usnews

http://www.globalresearch.ca/propaganda-for-a-price-the-ned-reporters-without-borders-and-the-2016-press-freedom-index/5520583

http://nsnbc.me/2015/02/14/reporters-without-borders-politicized-index-on-press-freedom-cold-war-cartoon/

http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_56162.shtml

 

 

3. Both Crimea and Russian corruption of government officials are discussed openly, and regularly in Russian state-sponsored news (and UK also has state-sponsored news, the BBC, and so does Canada, the CBC). Though, there may be instances of censorship concerning certain corruption (I don't know if there are), all of NATO's, Russia's, West Ukraine's, and Crimea's perspectives regarding Crimea are fully represented in Russia's news.

 

 

BTW, when I had previously looked through the examples given on Wikipedia, the one that you quoted:

 

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After a Russian consumer protection watchdog OZPP published a warning for Russian tourists about possibility of being denied EU visas after visiting Crimea, explaining that from the international law point of view Crimea is an occupied territory, Roskomnadzor blocked the OZPP website "for threatenting territorial integrity of Russian federation". From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia

... was the only instance which I thought resembled anything like censorship of Russian government criticism. But, I think, on its own, that instance of censorship does not qualify a broad claim of Russia censoring sources that are critical of government policies.

[Deli]

13 hours ago, Praesi said:

I am against any kind of censorship.

Not even hardcore child porn?

[Nomy]

25 minutes ago, Deli said:

Not even hardcore child porn?

There's a big difference between censorship and illegal stuff.

[Deli]

1 hour ago, Nomy said:

There's a big difference between censorship and illegal stuff.

Well, legal or not, is up to the law makers. If they want to censor something, like forbidding criticizing the authority, or certain political views. They just make some laws.

 

 

[SurvivorNVL]

Honestly -good for Russia! I still find it quite interesting that Russia, a bastion of atheism and Communism not too long ago - is now a traditionalist, Christian, nationalist-autocracy, with Slav bear-king as leader.  Someone really hit the upgrade button there.