Blacklist 2.0, now with criminal penalties

Great Chinese firewall - 10 million Chinese people sit and filter packets.
Great Russian firewall - 10 million Russians are sitting.

It is this gloomy joke that was announced on Linux.org.Ru on December 16, 2010 that we have to recall this spring. Due to the long holidays in early May, the Habrahabr community completely ignored the article “The Kremlin will criminalize“ harmful ”content on the Internet ”, which appeared on April 29 in Izvestia. Meanwhile, this article undoubtedly deserves discussion: it reports that the President’s administration is actively preparing right now to introduce a package of amendments to the law to the State Duma, so that the existing possibility of blocking sites for promoting “extremism”, “child pornography”, and “drugs” " And" suicides "new measures will be added - heavy fines and imprisonment (imprisonment).

The terms “extremism”, “child pornography”, “drugs” and “suicide” have to be quoted. We all involuntarily became living witnesses of how they closed the site about the EVE Online game for “drugs” (which described the use of fictional chemicals for fictional characters), for “suicide” - harmless humor like an article from Absurdopedia or Kaganov’s work (and in the so-called the real world on the pretext of child suicide is withdrawn from salethe Death Note manga in the Sverdlovsk region, although the whole region is named after one of the organizers of the killing of the Emperor’s children, but nobody cares about it), for “extremism” is the nationally-targeted anti-alcohol propaganda (No. 1568 in the federal List of extremist materials ). As for "child pornography" (actually intended for quite adult pedophiles), the need to combat its consumption on the Internet (instead of fighting its production in the real world, inevitably associated with real child molestation, for which there are unlicensed distributions on the Internet just constitute a direct economic threat, deprived of funding) is not entirely obvious - butquestion , given this minister, appeared to ignore.

The heart-rending cries of indignation caused by the closure of several sites for indisputable reasons, remained unanswered. The promotion of the flywheel of repression continues - now not only sites, but also people will become closed. Where it leads? I think that the persecution of fictional works similar to the above cases of fantastic “addiction” and the painted “suicide” will continue. This can be successfully guessed not only by extrapolating the events that have taken place, but also by drawing an analogy with foreign countries. Old-timers of Habrahabr will probably remember that the consequences of arbitrary and non-public replenishment of the black list (the contents of which are hidden from the public under the pretext of non-propaganda) I discussed at Habrahabr in the summer of 2009on the example of Australia. And it came true, although not in full. And now about how such arbitrariness may look when he begins to resort to real prison sentences, I propose to look at the example of another country in the Southern Hemisphere - New Zealand. A citizen who only recently got out of prison (but is still at risk of ten years ) has posted on the Internet only an anime about the sex life of fictional (and only partially humanoid) characters - elves and fairies, who, thanks to the peculiarities of Japanese animation (large eyes, large heads, etc.) and the peculiarities of Japanese voice acting (subtle voices, vivid emotions) seemed to experts "like children."

And it’s good that at least it’s about the image of sex, though between fictional (drawn) characters. And what can happen when it comes to the experts that almost any (even the most common) action can undergo eroticization in the anime so strong that it becomes a certain metaphor (symbol) of sex? The symbol may be quite obvious or not particularly obvious - it means that everything will depend on the good or bad will or bias of the expert in court. Kiss on the lips in Sekirei. A kiss on the arm ring in the Rozen Maiden. Brushing teeth at Nisemonogatari. Hair cutting at Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge. Any fan of anime (and those based on the surveytyped up to a third of the participants of Habrahabr) easily recall a couple more, two or two examples of the same kind.

Another sad thing is that the aforementioned New Zealand persecution of pictorial sex is overshadowed by the aforementioned Sverdlovsk persecution of pictorial suicide. This news is closer to us than New Zealand - and therefore more significant. The famous writer (and opposition) Chkhartishvili managed to introduce the Russian public to such a Japanese phenomenon as Shinju (心中) in his work “ Writer and Suicide ” -double suicide of lovers, committed under the pressure of circumstances. The experts had to add two and two in order to find, for example, a failed shinju through the self-sinking of lovers in water in the anime “Yosuga no Sora” (or even “Toradora!”), As well as the failed self-immolation of lovers in “Aku noHana. " If the legislation continues to insist that only information that can harm the fragile psyche of juvenile nonsense should get on the Internet, then the courts, of course, will not pass by the fact that in the modern world double suicide is more dangerous because it gives a couple in love such confidence in eternal unity and in mutual fidelity and in indescribable love that family life could never give, full of almost daily opportunities for quarrels and disappointments in each other.

In the end, I will answer this question: why do I think that the persecution of fictional works with children’s stories on the Internet will begin precisely with the prosecution of modern Japanese culture? Firstly, because “it has already begun”in the Sverdlovsk region (and in New Zealand), which means it can continue - say, in the Death Note story, we see such repeated cases of involuntary suicides under the influence of supernatural power, an analogue of which is easily found in many other Japanese animes, including very interesting stories (“Code Geass”, “Puella Magi Madoka Magica”, “Chaos; Head”, “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni”, etc.). Secondly, “proof from the contrary”: it seems quite obvious that Internet publishers of Russian classics with a gloomy and tragic ending (“Demons” by Dostoevsky, “Anna Karenina” Tolstoy, “Thunderstorm” Ostrovsky) will come not to the first, but to the last turn - in accordance with the famous poem Nimoeller.

Between these two milestones (the first and the last) a place will be found for many tens, or even hundreds of sites - and, therefore, for criminal cases against their owners. Hope for salvation can only be those who are preoccupied with following the neoclassical rules of safe IT business or at least the tactics of Elusive Joe.