YouTube banned by Russian court

Tom Parfitt
The Guardian
July 30, 2010

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Russia’s blogosphere reacted with anger today after a regional court banned YouTube because it carried a single video containing “extremist” content.

The court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Khabarovsk region in the Russian far east ordered Rosnet, a local internet provider, to block YouTube as well as three online libraries and a website that archives deleted web pages.

The regional ban was made because YouTube hosted Russia For Russians, an ultra-nationalist video which was added to the justice ministry’s federal list of banned extremist materials after a separate court decision in Samara region in November.

The other four sites – Web.archives.org, Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru – all carried copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Anton Nosik, Russia’s leading internet guru, condemned the decision. “The level of crassness in this court ruling is typical of legal proceedings concerning the internet in Russia,” he said. Google, the owner of YouTube, said the ruling violated Russians’ constitutional right to freedom of information.

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