The websites that do not abide by the Russia’s Law should be blocked is not a new idea. National website blocklist program being operated by Russia since late 2012, currently it has hundreds of websites, out of those promoting suicide and drug taking to that offering child pornography.

Russia’s largely unpopular anti-piracy law and fledgling introduced provisions for websites containing infringing content to be blocked at ISP level. Though blocking these offensive websites experiences a little opposition from public.

On August 1, as it was introduced to the wave of controversy, the legislation allowed to block those sites which are merely link to infringing content, if no action is taken by them within 72 hours of a complain. These blocked websites stay on the national blocklist until the action is taken, whether they are complied with some other law or removed from copyrighted files.

After placing the complaints on one of the Facebook’s countless pages about the content, the list had a most high-profile addition. The site has been added to the blocklist already and would be provided three days to take out the yet to be detailed content, confirmed by Telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor.

Based on the speculation made, that the problem lies with an ad for ‘smoking blends’ on the website, it was told by Roskomnadzor that they also had received complaints about other material and the webhosts of Facebook had been made aware of the pending block. While, it was told by Facebook that they were not informed of any problem but the issue would be rectified by taking necessary steps.

Artem Kozlyuk, the head of RosKomSvoboda, told that many thousands of websites are also being blocked illegally because of broad IP address-based filters in addition to the websites being officially added to the blocklist. Ninety nine percent of websites blocked in Russia recently are illegally being subjected to blocking.

Assessing the quantity of the websites, they are 30,000 in number, but only 450 of them have been blocked legally. Rest of the websites have been blocked because they were on the same IP address as those having offensive content.

Collateral damage is broad, it includes operating system sites, publishing houses, libraries, personal blogs and forums of all kinds, says Kozlyuk. As Russia set to enlargement of its new anti-piracy law, there would only be rise in number of complaints resulting in blockades of more number of websites.

Meanwhile, a petition is likely to be introduced which gathers 100 thousand signatures against the anti-piracy law. It was made clear in a press conference yesterday that the State Duma is not going to withdraw the legislation. “Cancelling the law is out of the question” told Minister of Culture Vladimir Medina.