Russia in crackdown on popular file-sharing websites

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

The Russian government temporarily blocked two popular websites on Monday under a new law intended to protect children from harmful material online.

Russia's telecommunications and media regulator, Roskomnadzor, blocked two sites - RuTracker.org, a Russian file-sharing site much like The Pirate Bay; and Librusek, an electronic library similar to Wikipedia - according to The Wall Street Journal.

RuTracker wrote a blog post about its situation on Monday, calling the blacklisting "idiocy" and saying that Roskomnadzor rules were unclear. It claimed to have been blocked because it was hosting a file called the "Encyclopedia of Suicide", which it says was unpopular and was empty anyway.

The block, which has since been lifted, represents the kind of action that internet freedom advocates warn comes with the territory of internet blacklists overseen by centralised government control. When the law was passed in July, it was touted by the government as a tool for stamping out sites that host child pornography and material associated with drug abuse, racism and "antisocial behavior" (summarised here in a Russian legal journal).

The country's web community hasn't taken kindly to the law. Russia's biggest search engine, Yandex, and the Russian-language Wikipedia have both staged online protests.

File-sharing sites typically encounter problems because of their connection with sharing content that is protected by copyright. But Russia's stance on the protection of intellectual property has been poor historically, which makes the move all the more unexpected.

In a July article commenting on the new law, Russian news site The Runet wrote that Russian internet and communications companies like Mail.ru are making their own efforts to ensure that the internet is safe for children, establishing a voluntary internet policing league which is "achieving positive results".

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/25925535/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A120C110Crussia0Eblocks0Epopular0Ewebsites0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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