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Law Repressing Social Media, Bloggers Now In Effect In Russia
An anonymous reader writes On Friday, Russia implemented a new law that significantly limits its citizens' online free speech. Under this new law, social media sites must "retain user data for at least six months...within the country's boundaries so it can be available for government inspection." Also, "bloggers with at least 3,000 daily readers must register with Roskomnadzor, the regulator that also oversees Russia's main media outlets." This, of course, means that popular bloggers will no longer be able to remain anonymous.
the Berlin Wall goes back up.
The 80's called and they want to know if you need a foreign policy.
And.... this information collection is legal in Russia, while what the NSA is doing is illegal.
Unlike the US/NSA.
No, the NSA is monitoring social media and bloggers, in Russia they have progressed from just monitoring to repressing them. I'm in no way in favor of what the NSA is doing but there is a difference between watcing bloggers and telling bloggers they have to register if they get a hitcount over 3000 or suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I remember as a kid reading the Soviet Union’s constitution giving Soviet citizens more rights than the US. They had a very good constitution and Canada had none. I thought that in Canada, there was no protection similar to our first amendment but Canadians could say, type and publish their thoughts freely. The Soviet union required typewriters to be registered with a typing sample so unauthorized speech wouldn’t contaminate the citizens. Russia is going down the same hole as the Soviet Union and we are following close behind.
Embrace the future.
freedom AFTER speech? not so much.
Must be /. night over at 4-chan tonight.
This link puts a little meat on the bones, though the story is still sketchy. Seems the law was aimed at 5 or 6 specific bloggers, though probably upwards of 500 could wind up being covered. ISPs not happy with it. Law purports to regulate Russian-language blogging, not limited by geography or physical placement. So a foreigner could theoretically run afoul of it if they publish in Russian (and become popular doing so) while a Russian could write anything they want without worry as long as they do it in another language?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Not that it makes this kind of policy, but Russia has had authoritarian governments for 500 years. What's the US's excuse?
The Russian law is to expose anonymous bloggers so Putin and his cronies know where to send the assassins when they see someone criticizing them or exposing their corruption. Same as when they had all the dissenting mainstream Russian journalists assassinated. Now Chairman Putin and his friends control the mainstream media, so on to phase 2: online journalists and bloggers. Of course they are thinking that announcing the law might save some money too, by intimidating people into not exposing the Chairman's lies (like the bullshit about Ukrainians needing any outside impetus to oust a corrupt Russian-backed president who syphoned off billions of dollars into his own pocket while sliding deeper into Chairman Putin's pocket).
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
If the Soviet's constitution gave the people just one right, it gave more than the US constitution does. That is because the US constiitution does not give or grant rights. It bars government from taking away some of the rights peolle already posess.
This is a pretty important difference.