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On 18 March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a set of amendments to the Federal Statute on information, information technologies and protection of information (or the IT Law, see IRIS 2018-1/39, IRIS 2017-8/34, IRIS 2014-6/31 and IRIS 2014-3/40) that aim to stop online dissemination of certain categories of offensive information. A new Article 15-1-1 bans spreading information that “exhibits blatant disrespect for the society, State, official state symbols of the Russian Federation, Constitution of the Russian Federation or governmental bodies of the Russian Federation.” The...

On 18 March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a set of amendments to the Federal Statute on information, information technologies and the protection of information (or the IT Law, see IRIS 2018-1/39, IRIS 2017-8/34, IRIS 2014-6/31 and IRIS 2014-3/40) that aim to stop online dissemination of certain categories of false information under the guise of truthful information. The amendments are to the existing Article 15-3 (“Procedures for restricting access to information disseminated illegally”) of the IT Law. They prohibit the dissemination in “network publications” (or registered...

On 1 November 2018, Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecoms, Information Technologies and Mass Communications - a governmental watchdog authority) (see IRIS 2012-8/36) - hosted a ceremony at which major Russian audiovisual content owners co-signed (along with providers of online search engines and owners of web resources that allow for video hosting) a memorandum that aims to strengthen the protection of intellectual property of online audiovisual products. A database of copyright-infringing webpages and audiovisual content in Russia is being established by content...

In its judgment in Savva Terentyev v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recognised a very high level of protection of freedom of speech concerning insulting comments about police officers published on a weblog. The ECtHR confirmed that some of the wording in the blog post was offensive, insulting and virulent, but it found that the (emotional) comments, as a whole, could not be seen as inciting to hatred or violence against police officers. The applicant in this case, Savva Terentyev, a resident of the Komi Republic of Russia, had a blog hosted by livejournal.com, a popular blog...

The Federal Statute “On amendments to the Federal Statute “On State Support for Cinematography of the Russian Federation” was adopted by the State Duma on 26 July 2018 and signed by the President on 3 August. The amendments to the 1996 cinema statute (see IRIS 1999-2/17 and IRIS 2014-6/32) specify the regulation of foreign film exhibition at festivals in Russia. The law now provides a definition for a “film festival” as “a cultural and educational event that is held in accordance with the regulations (rules) as approved by the organizers of this event, presents in itself screening of specially...