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29 March 2024

Russia warns of blocking YouTube over anti-Islam film

Published
By AFP

A new Russian media law could be used to block YouTube in the country over postings of the anti-Islam film that has sparked deadly rioting, the communications minister warned Tuesday.

"It sounds like a joke, but because of this video... all of YouTube could be blocked throughout Russia," minister Nikolai Nikiforov wrote on Twitter.

"If there is a court decision and YouTube does not take off the video, then access will be limited."

He cited sections of the law, which goes into effect November 1 and is designed to protect minors from extremist and other dangerous material, that allow the government to block an entire site over the content of a single page.

The Internet bill prompted protests from Russia's top search engine Yandex, which ran a black "censorship" ribbon on its front page, and also Russian-language Wikipedia which closed down for the day as lawmakers debated the measure.

Nikiforov, the youngest cabinet member at 30, initially criticised the bill. But he said he later backed amendments cutting the list of reasons for which a website could be banned after pressure from Internet companies.

Experts agreed that blocking YouTube was a possibility.

"When the law was being passed, representatives of the largest Internet players warned of the threats it contained," Anton Nosik, media director at SUP Media, owner of LiveJournal, told Moscow Echo radio.

"Those who wrote this law deliberately wrote this possibility into the law," he said.

Russia's federal prosecutors have already asked a Moscow court to include the US-produced "Innocence of Muslims" in a list of extremist materials.

A single district court ruling is sufficient for an item to be entered in Russia's national list of banned material, which already includes both Islamic and Christian texts.

Prosecutors have also sent a formal warning to YouTube's owner Google in Russia for the company to strictly observe federal law.

"Since the Russian Google company does not carry out administrative service of YouTube, we have forwarded the warning to our head office in the United States," a Google Russia spokesman told RIA Novosti.

The state media watchdog has also said it was "strongly recommending" that Internet providers block access to the film ahead of the Moscow court decision.

The initially obscure film, believed to have been produced by a small group of extremist Christians in the United States, has sparked a week of deadly protests across the Muslim world.

Those killed include the US envoy and three consulate staff workers in Libya. On Tuesday 12 people, mostly foreigners, died when a female suicide bomber blew up her station wagon in Kabul as it pulled up alongside a minivan carrying foreign workers.