Pushes for legislative reform in the country

Aug 3, 2010 14:16 GMT  ·  By

Last week, a Russian court ordered a local ISP to block YouTube entirely for hosting one video that it classified as ‘extremist’ in the country. Anyone with any understanding of how the internet and YouTube works would know that this is in no way a solution, but the court would have none of it, access should be cut off and that’s that.

A lot of people in Russia and around the world criticized the move and now Google has issued a semi-formal statement on the matter urging the court to reconsider and pushing for legislative reform in the country.

The court in the Siberian town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur ordered Rosnet, a local internet service provider, to prevent its customers from accessing YouTube altogether based on the existence of the “Russia for Russians” video created by a ultra-nationalistic group.

“As a result, some Russian Internet users will no longer have access to the myriad of legitimate online content and video available on services such as YouTube, including, ironically, the Russian President’s own YouTube Channel,” Marina Zhunich, Google’s Russia Policy Manager, explained.

Google obviously believes that this going way to far. A single video should not get in the way of millions of people accessing one of the most popular sites on the planet. What’s more, Google says that it has the tools in place for any party to request the take-down of a video that violates YouTube’s policies.

The issue, Google says, underlines the bigger problem with the Russian legal system which provides no protection to third-parties in these cases. “No provisions in the Russian legal system protect neutral online hosting platforms from being held directly liable for the content uploaded by third parties. In the European Union countries, a strong e-commerce directive offers such ‘intermediary liability protection.’ The U.S. offers similar legal protection to hosting platforms,” Google adds.