Porn Sites Were Banned in Russia Under Century-Old Law

A local Russian court has ruled to ban 136 websites containing porn material by citing international conventions dated 1910 and 1923. As you may know, the Russian Federation didn’t exist a century ago. The cited conventions were signed by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

According to the Russia’s state-run media watchdog, both Russian and foreign websites will be blocked under the court order, but it is unknown whether they will be blocked across Russia or will be limited to a region where the court ruling was made.

The local district attorney’s office singled out the websites using the Russian search engine, to search for “porn video” and “prostitutes”, which resulted in a list of 136 websites. The experts who analyzed their content concluded that those featured porn material. The Russian media watchdog revealed that it regularly receives requests from various state agencies to ban unauthorized content, but had to admit that this was the largest single request it had ever received regarding the porn sites.

105 years ago, imperialist Russia signed an agreement for the repression of obscene publications in Paris. 13 years later, the Soviet Union signed the international convention regarding the obscene publications in Geneva. As you can understand, this was long before the era of online porn. The most interesting part is that Russian law bans the illegal distribution of porn content, but does not specify what constitutes “legal distribution”. As a result, one may conclude that a ban on pornography in the country can’t be legally justified.

By the way, this news follows the announcement of the local watchdog that it was illegal to make Internet memes featuring public figures, as those violated Russian legislation on personal information.