14 DAY TRIAL // The Russian government doesn't like the fact that people can go around those pesky blockades they order around, so they want VPNs and other anonymizing services to stop what they're doing.
This isn't just an empty threat, as the government is working on a new bill to require VPNs and anonymizing services to stop providing access to blocked domains or risk getting blocked themselves. What's more, search engines would also face the consequences if they linked to banned sites, although the reasons behind this are murky since even if a link is returned by the search engine and someone in Russia clicks on it, it wouldn't go anywhere since the site is blocked anyway.
Russia is one of the world leaders when it comes to blocking off websites. Tens of thousands of sites are now blocked in the country on a wide range of grounds, including copyright infringement, Torrent Freak points out.
Tightening the leash the government has on the Internet
As most netizens, Russians have turned to VPNs, proxies, mirror sites and even TOR to access the content that they are being denied. The Russian government doesn't like this and is working on legislation to make sure their blockades aren't circumvented, local news outlet Vedomosti reports.
According to the draft of the legislation, tools that can help users circumvent blockades will be blocked themselves if they do not comply. It should be interesting to see how they tackle browser extensions that can be used for this exact purpose.
In order for these VPN or proxy providers to be allowed to work in Russia, they'd have to prevent access to all domains present on the banned resources list. This would ensure they avoid legal issues, but it would certainly hurt the image these services have worked hard to build over the years, since it would undermine their credibility.