"New Focus" do not confiscate

    The New Focus website will not be confiscated, but will only be able to continue working after registration as a media outlet. This decision was made today by the Abakan city court, reports Regnum . Defenders of the online edition are going to appeal against him.

    Recall, on December 1, 2006, in Abakan, Justice of the Peace Marina Khokhlova decided to confiscate the New Focus, because its owner, journalist Mikhail Afanasyev, did not register the site as a media outlet. The amount of the fine assigned for payment to the owner amounted to 20 thousand rubles. In response, Afanasyev appealed to the lawyers of the AGORA Interregional Human Rights Association and appealed against this decision.

    The decision of Judge Svetlana Shapovalova essentially excludes from the previous paragraph only the confiscation of the site. Explaining this fact, the judge noted that the online edition “New Focus” meets all the signs of the media and is.

    At the same time, in the course of the case, the Central Siberian Directorate of Rosokhrankultura submitted to the court a document testifying that the principle of voluntary registration of mass media is currently operating on the Internet. But the judge, having studied it, only came to the conclusion that the owner of the site did not apply for registration.

    Afanasyev’s lawyer Irina Khrunova noted in her commentary on the court decision that the owners of “inconvenient” sites in Russia can breathe a sigh of relief. She added that the illegal decision on the mandatory registration of the “New Region” remains in force only for now: “We will appeal it to the Supreme Court of Khakassia.”

    The case against the site’s chief editor, Mikhail Afanasyev, and journalist Andrei Sakharov began on November 14 of last year. He was brought by the prosecutor's office of Abakan on the fact of an administrative offense - distribution of media products without registration.

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