Russian providers of Internet services may avoid responsibility for offensive or controversial content stored on their servers, according to amendments to the Russian Civil Code proposed by the presidential law codification council, a Russian business daily said on Tuesday.

A new draft Civil Code includes an article stipulating responsibility of Internet providers for their content. The presidential council drew up the amendments to the article following an order by President Dmitry Medvedev, an active Internet user, the Vedomosti paper said.

The bill relieves providers of responsibility for the content if three conditions are met: the controversial content was uploaded to the provider's server "by a client or on his order"; a provider "did not know or should not have known" about the contentiousness of the content; the provider took "prompt measures" to eliminate the consequences of the controversial content storage following a written request by a third party.

The measures to be taken will be specified in a special law on Internet providers, Vedomosti said. According to the proposed amendments, a provider is obligated to delete the content within three days, suspend the domain on a written police request and limit access to questionable information upon a prosecutor's request.

MOSCOW, December 7 (RIA Novosti)