The State Duma is scheduled to submit a draft ban on the dissemination of instructions on how to circumvent blocking sites

Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Media Alexei Volin

At the last meeting of the State Duma, the question was raised about prohibiting the dissemination of instructions on how to circumvent the blocking of prohibited sites.

“In the near future, the Government will receive from the government our proposals that would prohibit this kind of campaign to inform the population, how to bypass the existing blocking by the telecom operator. Some small operators are hooligans, posting on screen savers when they close access to a particular material, in fact, instructions on this detour, ”Kommersant quoted Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Communications Alexei Volin, quoted as saying Interfax.

Now, placing such information on the stub, the providers do not violate the law, since they comply with all the requirements of Roskomnadzor and legislation to restrict access to the prohibited materials. But the blocking system itself is extremely flawed and, with simple instructions for using a proxy or VPN, is unable to stop the user.

“We proceed from the fact that there should be a punishment, when on a stub that indicates that the site is blocked, the telecommunications operator places information on how to bypass this block. We consider it inadmissible to propagandize blocking bypass on a stub that blocks access to the site, because in this case it’s not a blockage, but a mockery, ”commented Volin for the Izvestia newspaper .

With the promotion of ways to circumvent blocking sites have been fighting for almost a year. To attract providers and distributors of such information was proposed by the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet (AZAPI) in February 2016. The association initiative was later supported by the Ministry of Communications.

This year, the court has already fined the Roskomsvoboda organization for the “Toolkit” page, which described ways to circumvent blocking sites. According to the prosecutor, the information on the page “created conditions for users to access extremist materials.”