Russia has enacted a new 'Information Security Law' which more or less prevents any sort of freedom of expression coming out of Russian Websites. In a move that China would be proud of, any bloggers with more than 3,000 page views a day must register with the mass media regulator 'Roskomnadzor' and conform to the regulations that larger Russian News outlets already conform to.
These rules include:
The only images allowed of Vladimir Putin must have him shirtless and preferably with an animal of some kind
No references to communism whatsoever
Decrying all video games that have Russians as the bad guys as 'western propaganda'
No references to 'The Hunt For Red October' or Sean Connery
Discussion of the Ukraine/Crimea issue to emphasise that they wanted to join Russia and that all military action was done of their own accord. Also, Russia has no idea where they got all those weapons from.
Constant reminders that the only reason NASA have a space program is because Russia has been flying them up there on Soyuz.
The new regulations have been described as 'Draconian' by everyone else. It takes away any anonymity that bloggers were once afforded and as all data must be stored on Russian servers, the government has full access to the identities of all bloggers.
Earlier in 2014, a law was passed to allow the Russian government to block any website it wished without any explanation whatsoever. They blocked several blogs of prominent critics of the government saying they were being used to help organise illegal protests (at least they gave a reason i guess).
For a country that is so pissed off at the freedom the internet provides, at least they're still providing shelter to Edward Snowden i suppose.
In the interests of science, we ran this article through the Russian Government servers and this is what popped out the other end:
RUSSIA ANNOUNCES NEW LEGISLATION TO IMPROVE THE INTERNET
Vladimir Putin announced today that we will be allowing our bloggers to publish their information through Russian Government servers. This will greatly improve the quality of our output so the rest of the world can see Russia as the intellectual powerhouse that it is.
This is on the back of our previous law that allows us to block any website we wish. This was enacted to protect our innocent Russian children from the various bad things that regularly happen throughout the world.
Meanwhile, American Ambassador Edward Snowden continues to live in peace in the Kremlin after defecting from the United States.
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