The Russian lower house of parliament and the Communications Ministry have prepared separate draft laws to regulate the use of the Internet in Russia, a respected business daily said on Wednesday.
A working group in a State Duma committee has prepared draft amendments to the law on information, information technologies and the protection of information, Vedomosti said.
The main idea of the law is that anything permissible in real life should also be allowed in the Internet and that any attempts to introduce additional restrictions should be illegal.
But the Communications Ministry draft is much tougher and would require all Internet providers to suspend domains if requested to do so by the police and also to restrict a user's access to the net if prosecutors consider it necessary.
Under the State Duma's bill, website creators are responsible for their site if they are Russian citizens or/and are in Russia and even if their server is foreign.
Under the Communications Ministry's bill, the Russian Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications will give 24 hours to a website to edit or delete comments posted by its readers after the agency issues an official request.
On June 15, the Russian Supreme Court ruled that Internet media bear no responsibility for their readers' comments. However, if the agency considers that these comments are an abuse of media freedom, for example contain an incitement to terrorist activities and crime, it may require a website to delete or edit such comments within 24 hours.
Internet media outlets which refuse to remove reader comments when requested to do so by the federal media watchdog will be prosecuted.
However, unregistered outlets, for example, blogs, will be held liable for offensive, extremist, libelous or false information that they may post.
MOSCOW, July 7 (RIA Novosti)
