November 1 in Russia came into effect law that providers must block access to sites containing information about pedophilia, methods of manufacture and use of drugs and ways of committing suicide. They create a register of sites (or IP) with forbidden content and providers must block access to these sites. You can file a report about the resource contain illegal information, and after a while they can add this site to the list of banned. All this is done to protect children from harmful information on the Internet. They have blocked Russian Lurkmore (encyclopedia like Encyclopaedia Dramatica, TVtropes or KYM), lib.rus.ec ( the largest Russian-language digital library) aaand.. EVE Online forums and wiki about TES because there were articles on the in-game use of in-game drugs or something like that. Yes, they also blocked some sites which are really about drugs or pedophilia but you can just use anonymizers and get all that information in a few clicks so It turns out that they just created a list of sites with child pornography and drugs and also they made ​​it slightly difficult to access some useful information. What do you think?

And excuse me for my bad English.

whoa, that's absurd. why was the humor site blocked, do they tell you the category under which it fell?

Ehh, I suppose they had good intentions, but it's just not really feasible to regulate the internet, and I don't think that trying to do so will ever lead to good results. Parents should be the ones responsible for regulating their children's internet activities, not the government.

No. They said that they won't give any comments. Also there were humorous articles about marijuana. But there wasn't something about manufacturing or usage. According to law they had to send warning that the site has illegal content then give 24 hours to remove and only then block. But there were no warnings, they just blocked it.

You said exactly what I thought. I don't see anything about drugs in Internet until I google it. And if children search such kind of information that's parents problems. And if I still can see sense in banning distribution of information about drugs and pedophilia, but suicide? Does someone really need guide how to jump out the window? Yes, there are many child suicides in Russia. But in many parts of the country the Internet is still poorly accessible. So can we really blame the Internet? The problem is in reality, not the Internet. Parents should watch after their children, and the government should hunt criminals, not just hiding sites with drugs and child pornography, and state that everything is fine.

I think the way they're going about this is wrong. Blocking everything that has to do with the subject hurts more than it helps. For example, wanting to limit children's interactions online with predators is a good thing so I would not be opposed to blocking sites where child porn was the point but blocking everything that mentions it or the word pedophile is pretty outlandish. How are sites supposed to inform children of what they should avoid and report if they are not allowed to post such content? As for the drugs, how is someone supposed to do a report on the harmful, helpful, or historical use of drugs if they are not allowed access to sites which mentions them. Sure you don't want someone getting the information on how to build a portable meth lab but you also don't want to block every sight that mentions it since theoretically any site in which users could post content would be blocked. I think the best way to go about making kids and other people safe on the internet is to catch the criminals who use it to commit crimes, money should be put towards that not towards censorship. It's hiding the problem, not making it go away. Just because you blocked some sites does not mean the criminals stop committing crime, they just move to do so somewhere else and it's not really a solution to have that happen.

Also I am always opposed to one country, no matter what country it is, imposing censorship or restrictions on the net. It's not something that should be controlled by solely one land. If someone is doing something illegal on it it is not the internet's fault, you need to catch the criminal not shut down the web.

I honestly don't think blocking works in any way, for any country. Chasing down and shutting down works, though I'm not sure how effective it is compared to blocking.

Sadly, even though it's for a good cause, I feel like they're doing it wrong.

It may be "for the children" (insert tears and pleading voice), but from the sounds of it its also blocking adults. This kind of thing never works well. What if a kid is being abused and they aren't sure what's going on or what to do about it? Where is the child going to find resources to help? You can't very well help a kid who is being abused, nor warn kids about what can happen to them without ending up getting blocked by the state.

You want to protect kids? Go after the people abusing them, luring them and so forth. Provide free blocking software for parents to install if they want. Create an education website that shows kids the tactics used by pedophiles. Create advertising campaigns that vilifies abusers, but doesn't shame the victims. When someone is caught abusing a child, send them to jail - and none of these idiot sentences where a child is abused for years and the offender goes to jail for all of six months.

As for drug abuse, stop the damn scare tactics and provide real information that kids can trust. Provide after school programs and youth drop-in centers so the kids have things to do other than join gangs and take drugs.

There are a million and one things that can be done to help the situation, what they are doing isn't even a band-aid, its totally counter-productive!

it's bad.

websites linked to pedophilia get blocked in a lot of countries, but i suspect the way this law works in Russia means it opens up the ability to block an even wider range of websites for no reason.

I doubt this is an attempt to protect anybody, but is rather a gradual ease-in to controlling everybody. They start out with something that people are likely to sympathize with, and then work their way up to blocking whatever they want, because it's easier to start like this.