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Russia Bans PornHub and YouPorn, Tells People to Meet Someone in Real Life

This is the second time Russia bans PornHub

Sep 15, 2016 13:10 GMT  ·  By
Decision to ban PornHub on Roskomnadzor's website
   Decision to ban PornHub on Roskomnadzor's website

Russia's government-controlled Internet watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has ordered Russian Internet service providers to block access to adult websites PornHub and YouPorn.

The decision to ban the two sites came after a long legal debate that started in May 2016 when a judge ordered the two services to be blacklisted for violating "the ban on the dissemination of information regarding the production of pornographic materials and paraphernalia."

Watching pornography is not illegal in Russia, but filming or spreading adult content is, according to article 242 of the Russian Federation's Criminal Code.

Russia banned PornHub last year as well

Russia attempted to ban PornHub in September 2015, also following a court order, which was later reversed. A Russian court will also review this latest ban later this year.

The decision to ban PornHub, this time, came from the Buturlinovsky District Court in the Voronezh region. Last year, the decision came from a court in the small town of Krylovskogo, near the city of Krasnodar.

Just like last year, Twitter users didn't take the government decision standing down, criticizing the government's stance on adult content.

At one point yesterday, following intense user backlash, the official Roskomnadzor answered a user and told her to "meet someone in real life," instead of watching adult movies.

Russia's Ban Hammer came down on bigger names

Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies, and Mass Communications) runs a pretty big blacklist when it comes to Internet sites.

In the past, the Russian government banned the Wayback Machine, Wikipedia, and Reddit pages for holding content on child pornography, terrorism, and cannabis.

Because these sites ran over HTTPS, ISPs couldn't ban one specific page, and banned the entire website. Those services caved in and implemented server-side filters for Russian users. All bans were later lifted.