1,700 Websites In Russia Go Dark In SOPA-Style Protest

An anonymous reader writes "Russians are going nuts over a new anti-piracy law that enables Roskomnadzor (the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications) to 'blacklist' Internet resources before the issue of a court order. Indeed, 1700 websites have issued a blackout, just like U.S. firms did in protest at the Stop Online Piracy Act. The law, widely known as the Russian SOPA, has been slammed by some major tech firms from the country, including Yandex. Freedom of speech campaigners are worried it could be used for political censorship, while digital companies say it will slow down the development of Internet services in the country."

In Soviet Russia...

[Sigvatr]

...websites log out you!

Re:

[theNetImp]

why is it I never have mod points when I need them.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

...websites log out you!

That's very gay, but that also makes it illegal in Russia.

Re:

[davester666]

They are coming for him, and for you, for your knowledge of 'gay'.

Russia vs. Amerika

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference between indiscriminately shutting down arbitrary websites without a court order and doing the same after a rubber-stamp judge applies his magic seal without reading the court orders*?

* Which would cut into his precious golf time.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Re:

[dyingtolive]

Damnit Ethanol-fueled, you're sober. Get off the Internet and go buy a bottle of whisky before you embarrass yourself!

Re:Russia vs. Amerika

[SuricouRaven]

I don't know what the civil courts are like, but the criminal courts are famous for their >99% conviction rate. They really do exist purely to rubber-stamp arrests. The police are often nice enough to invite visitors to pay a 'reinvestigation fee' to re-examine the case before charging though - if the bribe is to their satisfaction, the charges are dropped.

I would assume the civil courts are similar rubber-stamps for various government agencies: Say something insulting to Putin, and you can expect someone to go over your site looking for a quote you've repeated without permission to use as a pretext to block the site.

Re:

[dimeglio]

In some countries judges are elected. Having a "rubber stamper" reputation isn't going to help them be re-elected. For those who have nominated judges, the process is similar except you have to go a little higher up the political chain. In Russia, all bets are off.

Re:

[Zemran]

Are you really one of those simple people that actually believe that democracy works?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The high conviction rates in Russia are due to the different court system. In Russia case brought to court by "Prokuratura" - a loose analog of State attorney in US. Prokuratura is separate from investigative branch of the police. In oversees police detectives and validates cases before they brought to the court. In the end, Prokuratura makes a decision if case going to reach the court or not. They are partially evaluated on the conviction rate.

Hence in court, Prokuratura argues state side it is their MAIN

Re:

[interkin3tic]

Politics 102 is "If you object to something for some reason, be sure to mention other possible reasons to object to it, on the off chance that someone who doesn't care about your reason will care about the other reason."

Perhaps there are a number of Russian citizens who are opposed to the censorship, but are too apathetic to protest against it. Maybe there are Russian citizens who tell themselves that it will be okay, they'll probably only use it against bad guys. Perhaps censorship AND lack of any p

Re:

[Yvanhoe]

If the laws are more or less correct, you can then hope to have a correct justice if you fight corruption in the judicial system.

The fact that the legal problem is just the first problem of a long list of things to solve is not a reason to not go and try to fix it.

1700+ sent to prison and tortuere chambers

[cod3r_]

Not smart to fuck with the russian government.

Re:1700+ sent to prison and tortuere chambers

[dyingtolive]

Been working for me so far.

Signed, Proud American.

Re:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Imagine a boot stepping on a human face...forever.

Well, forever minus a few years now.

Yandex

[ls671]

I would have been happier if Yandex stopped scanning my site for a while but no luck... ...
199.21.99.91 - - [02/Aug/2013:14:35:29 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 403 202 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YandexBot/3.0; +http://yandex.com/bots)" ...

Re:

[SuricouRaven]

It's basically harmless. Doesn't use significant resources.

Doesn't do you any good though either: Yandex is a Russian search engine. The users speak Russian, so not many are going to be visiting an english-language site.

What hosting company?

[Utoxin]

Are we sure they weren't just hosted on Bluehost?

Re:

[amxcoder]

Yeah, Bluehost, or HostGator, or HostMonster... a lot more sites than that are down in the US today. I'm sure a good portion of the US internet is down today, a lot more than 1700 sites. -jason

Re:

[masshuu]

Hostgator hosts mosts of its servers with bluehost now. ...

Probably busy today looking at the forums.

Remember when..

[Anonymous Coward]

the soviet union was the butt of all privacy and secret police jokes...

To the rescue

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Mr. Snowden will be able to help...

Re:

[VortexCortex]

the 8eaper BSD's 200 running NT

Hmm, yeah, that would probably do the trick alright. IIS on NT in a BSD VM. I'd be on strike too if that's what I had to work with.

How'd they coordinate it all?

[Netdoctor]

Simple.

They hosted on HostGator.