As of Tuesday, April 22nd, Russian officials have passed a bill that will render illegal anonymous blogging. In the light of VK now being controlled by the Kremlin inner circle members, this bill constitutes a new step towards Internet censorship in Russia. More precisely, the bill states that Internet websites having more than 3000 daily readers will now have to declare their true identity to the government. By doing this, blog managers would have to abide by the same rules and regulations than newspapers and television networks, but without benefitting from the level of legislative protection that these two forms of media have. Alongside this measure, the bill also states that the managers of those websites would now be held responsible for the veracity of all that their properties contain, including comments made by other users. To many Internet users worldwide, this is a big step towards complete Internet censorship in Russia. However, some hope may be left, since the bill might be declared unconstitutional, a verdict that has yet to be approved.
Source: The Montreal Gazette
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