14 DAY TRIAL // Russia joints the less-than-flattering list of countries to ban the video site YouTube. Now a court in the far-east town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Khabarovsk region has ordered that YouTube, along with four other sites, be blocked by an ISP in the region. In YouTube’s case, the reason was an extremist video, dubbed Russia for Russians, belonging to a far-right movement. The other sites were banned for hosting copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
The video, Russia for Russians had already been banned by a separate court for its ultra-nationalistic views. The prosecutors argued that the video’s presence on YouTube meant that the site had to be blocked. Apparently, no attempt was made to contact YouTube to have the video removed. Instead the judge ordered the ISP, Rosnet, to ban the site to the dismay of internet users there.
The other four websites were the Internet Archive, web.archives.org, and three Russian libraries, lib.rus.ec, thelib.ru and zhurnal.ru. Russia has a long tradition of fighting against nationalistic movements, ever since the second World War, and, despite being a democracy for two decades now, the old sentiments linger. Despite this, there has been a rise of this type of extremist movements in the country.
Rosnet has said that it can’t be responsible for the content others publish online. Furthermore, it argues that banning an entire site for a single piece of offending content does not make a lot of sense. The ISP is now appealing the decision.
“All of mankind is using this website. And providers like ours do not violate Russian law. But we are still being forced to close the website so that our users can not log on and watch the videos. This is absurd!,” Aleksandr Ermakov, owner for Rosnet, said. “According to this logic, we have to demolish all buildings that have swastikas on the walls. Or when two people are discussing a bomb over the phone, we have to take away the phones from all people across Russia,” he added.