ITAR-TASS is reporting that Russian Bloggers are about to be required to register with the state and follow news outlet laws.
The law introduces a new term: "Internet user called blogger." Bloggers will be obliged to declare their family name and initials and e-mail address. Those authors whose personal website or page in social networks has 3,000 visitors or more a day must have themselves registered on a special list and abide by restrictions applicable to the mass media. In other words, registration requires the blogger should check the authenticity of published information and also mention age restrictions for users. Also, bloggers will have to follow mass media laws concerning electioneering, resistance to extremism and the publication of information about people's private lives. An abuse of these requirements will be punishable with a fine of 10,000 to 30,000 rubles (roughly $300 to $1,000) for individuals and 300,000 rubles ($10,000) for legal entities. A second violation will be punishable with the website's suspension for one month.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @09:58PM
I'm not quite sure how to feel about this, on one hand Russia seems to have a progressive attitude equating blogs with more traditional news and media outlets on the other hand I get this uneasy feeling that bloggers posting true but unconvinient things will be prosecuted, or worse, disappear mysteriously.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 25 2014, @12:03AM
You have nothing to admire as progressive attitude. Otherwise you may call the older soviet communists times "progressive" as well: the publishing and/or distributing "subversive materials" (manifests or pamphlets) were punishable quite harshly at that time, but you can bet the ones caught doing so were not given the recognition of "distinguished members of the writing/reporting guilds".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by elf on Friday April 25 2014, @10:35AM
I think its progressive in the way they are trying to ensure garbage in not put on to blogs but I don't think they have this new rule by being a kind and caring nation. It's more likely that they want to control the blogs like they control the media and not allow any anti Russia, anti Putin type writing.
There isn't a lot of logical sense of a lot of things coming out of Russia at the moment, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @04:53PM
You are wrong. You have "progressive" confused with "nonprogressive". Garbage should be allowed on any and all web pages. This is called freedom. One person's garbage is another person's treasure, and it's no government's business to determine which is which. Your thinking that the government should control what someone writes about in an online journal is sick.
(Score: 1) by Refugee from beyond on Friday April 25 2014, @04:53PM
>they are trying to ensure garbage in not put on to blogs
And what is "garbage" and isn't, of course, decided by mighty all-knowing and all-seeing saints.
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @07:12AM
When you've got "bloggers" as mass media with no privileges of being actually a mass media it's called "backwards" not "progress."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:01PM
I'd better sign up for my free speech permit then. Let me just get together my name, address, national ID number, and implanted RFID public key fingerprint. This is a good law that will protect me from those who would undermine free speech. All hail our one true god, the government.
Say, does anyone know if Tor is blocked yet in Russia? For research, of course.
(Score: 0, Troll) by sjwt on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:44PM
Heavens forbid a Government would look at the internet and think 'Man this isnt just a bunch of kids, we are going to have to treat these guys as real reporters and realise that they should follow the same guidelines so we don't have to put up with them flat out lying'
With 3K visitors a day, you should be held to some level of social responsibility, akin to the same we expect from news, hell I'd like to whittle that number down to Zero, less homeopathic crap less Anti Vax crap, less crap over all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hybristic on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:24PM
I am not a reporter, nor do I know the proper guideline for becoming part of the official press, but this still doesn't seem right. When I was in college my friends and I created a magazine on technology and the schools relationship with it. Sometimes we even had serious investigative pieces. No one ever asked us to document ourselves anywhere, including the multiple staff members we interviewed and passed the magazine out to. So is this really the proper guidelines for your run of the mill blogger? I doubt it.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 25 2014, @12:27AM
People are perfectly capable of doing this themselves, selecting web sites for their needs. You don't need governments to spot and label whack-jobs or tinfoil-hatters for you.
Why would a government bureaucrat be any better at this than Joe/Ivan Citizen?
Do you really buy into the Nanny State to such a degree in your private life?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by sjwt on Friday April 25 2014, @01:07AM
No, but I deal daily with the fact that unfortunately a large proportion of the population is UNABLE to deal with making those kind distinctions, hell when over 1/4 of surveyed american believe that the sun revolves around the earth, and more then half don't believe evolution is correct, then YES I think the government should step in.
Anti Vaxes and there insain clinging to Vaccine cause Autism [activistpost.com], Parents who murder thier children [smh.com.au] by providing them with only homeopathic remedies, Aluminium Foil hat wearers [archive.org] who don't realise that there is a strong DB gain in known registerd government frequencies when putting on such a device, the list goes on..
If you think the average Joe really knows enough about 100% of life to make informed decisions on everything you are either delusional or trolling. Most doctorate will tell you flat out that with out full study in most fields they wouldn't even consider giving advice on things, life and the universe is really that complex. Our knowledge grows daily and what was common knowledge years ago and truths can be out of date, wrong or even dangerous.
(Score: 2) by forsythe on Friday April 25 2014, @01:42AM
There are so many replies I'd like to make to that, but I'll settle for just these:
- What makes you think that the government is better at making these choices than the average citizen? After all, these are people who ask ``Why are we building meteorological satellites when we have the Weather Channel?''.
- If Average Joe can't be trusted to learn the truth about homeopathy, should Average Joe be trusted to decide what jobs to apply for? Should Average Joe be trusted with discretion as to how he spends his wages? Should Average Joe be trusted to speak in public, where impressionable minds might overhear him? Should Average Joe be trusted to select his own reading material?
- Certainly if Average Joe claims to have disproved the government-approved fact ``homeopathy doesn't work'', he should be ignored. Certainly if Non-Average John claims to have disproved the government-approved fact ``the Earth is flat'' he should be listened to. How do you separate Joe from John without institutionalizing groupthink?
- What field do you have ``full study'' in that allows you to consider giving advice on censorship? Is this study really full?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @07:50AM
What makes you think that a structural engineer is better at designing bridges than the average citizen?
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Friday April 25 2014, @09:35AM
Your analogy lacks context. Essentially you are claiming that qualifications and experience always lead to better outcomes. But in reality this just isn't the case; there are a myriad of other factors that contribute as well.
If a structural engineer is motivated to design a bridge that is strong and will last a long time then chances are yes you will get a much better bridge design because he has more experience in this field. But if you tell the structural engineer you will pay him a $10,000 bonus if he builds the bridge for under $100 you're probably going to end up with a pretty crappy bridge.
A government might be better qualified, better educated and more experienced, but as history has shown us time and again, this doesn't always lead to the best choices being made. People in power are always motivated by the desire to retain their power. Not to mention other factors like greed/corruption and lobbying weighing in as well.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 25 2014, @08:09PM
Actually if anything, history has shown us that Governments are NOT better qualified, better educated and more experienced. If fact just the opposite is true.
Government jobs (all too often) are the last refuge of the indolent and the ignorant. I can't imagine a worse group of people to put in charge of who can say what.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday April 25 2014, @06:19AM
Silly examples, that are totally nongermane to the central facts of the story.
Utter nonsense.
Governments have never been the purveyors of truth and enlightenment. Not in Russia, and not in the
US. Any person who thinks the government should be in charge of deciding what can be printed and what can't, who can publish, and who can't is tyrannical by definition.
Any fool who would put the government, any government, in charge of that simple they can point to one stupid person somewhere on earth is simply an enabling apologist for government censorship.
You seem to believe you are capable of making your own choices. Why not climb down off of your pedestal and allow others to make their own choices? Wrong choices are self correcting over time.
Too bad government isn't.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @08:57AM
You don't need governments to spot and label whack-jobs or tinfoil-hatters for you.
This system is not usable (or necessary) for the government to spot undesirable speech and locate its origin. The government can walk into any datacenter and demand answers, and they will get them.
This system is only usable for establishing legal responsibility for one's words. You can say whatever you want - but if someone does not like what you say, he has his own freedom to go after you in court of law.
Is that good? I don't know. But it is probably fair enough. The accused should be able to know who is accusing him, and confront the accuser if necessary. Otherwise $politician1 can hire a thousand anonymous bloggers with audience to write how $politician2 devours live children and takes bath in blood of virgins.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Friday April 25 2014, @10:03AM
Defamation laws are a very tricky subject I think. They are ripe for abuse as a means of censoring things that ARE actually true.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't need to register anywhere just to be able to participate in free speech regardless of how many people hear your words (be it 0, 1, 10, 100, 5000 or a bazillion people).
Yes lots of people say things that are incorrect, stupid, cruel, etc. And sometimes it can seem like there is a lot more ridiculous nonsense being said than truth. But the right to express ourselves and our opinions is so absolutely fundamental to creating and maintaining a free society that these things are trivial side effects in comparison.
We should focus more on educating people how to discern fact from fiction, how to check references and how to comprehend statistical methods so that inaccurate and misleading sources of information are quickly exposed as such. Educate the listeners, don't crack down on the speakers or we will lose so many amazing sources of new discussions and ideas.
In this particular case I don't think this is anything to do with preventing rumour and defamation. To me this is a thinly veiled attempt by the Putin government to scare independent media sources into self-censoring their own words. A sort of "we know where you live now so watch out" warning to them.
(Score: 0) by tftp on Friday April 25 2014, @10:08PM
Defamation laws are a very tricky subject I think.
Yes, they are. But they exist in all developed societies, because otherwise the only way to deal with abuse is to take a weapon in one's hands. Laws are intended to provide a less drastic way of resolving a debate.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't need to register anywhere just to be able to participate in free speech regardless of how many people hear your words (be it 0, 1, 10, 100, 5000 or a bazillion people).
Why? I am asking not because I am opposed to your proposal, but because I want to know what is the origin of this statement. By the looks of it, it's an axiom - and as such, one can have other axioms in its place. Societies that are based on alternative set of axioms would be just as viable. For example, one can say: "you must register with the state and make your identity known if your audience, calculated by this formula, exceeds $max." This does not place an undue burden on you because the costs are zero. This does not prevent you from blogging. The only thing it does is it attaches a specific name of the journalist to the blog, just as all the traditional MSM do.
If you read about the law in detail [tjournal.ru], you will see that it requires:
I am not sure that it is in the interest of the society to allow any of those forbidden actions. Sure, a truly free man is free to walk up to you and your wife in a restaurant and say "Hi, Sharon, nice to see you after that last time when we were f*ng at the motel - and who is this guy, your new stud?" A truly free man is also free to walk up to a group of children and start talking in a language that will make a sailor blush. Does the society benefit from such freedom? (Note: not the government. The government is not yet involved. We are thinking about a collection of humans. That collection holds the ultimate power.)
In reality, as I see, this law only forces visible bloggers (with traffic and audience) to conform to the same rules that MSM was always operating under. It requires them to not lie; to be polite; and to keep their blogs within the 'G' rating. It is curious why some bloggers want to be seen as MSM when they investigate events, but at the same time they want to be exempt when they report their findings.
We should focus more on educating people how to discern fact from fiction, how to check references and how to comprehend statistical methods so that inaccurate and misleading sources of information are quickly exposed as such.
It is not possible, and you know it. Most of the human race are not rocket scientists; even those who are a little better than most do not always have time to do a full-blown research on a newspaper report. If the blog says that the police is massing at the $location to shoot and kill three unarmed, black, liberal students, you can bet that most people will rush to the location instead of hitting Wikipedia and LexisNexis.
To me this is a thinly veiled attempt by the Putin government to scare independent media sources into self-censoring their own words.
Every journalist must check his own words; he cannot write anything that is obviously racist; that is obviously a lie. Mistakes are not forbidden - and they do happen all the time, even in papers like NYT. They get corrected, and there is a well established procedure for that. I haven't seen NYT for a while, but I do not recall them ever publishing screenshots from pr0n movies, or writing editorials where every other word is f*k. Do they self-censor? Yes. is it wrong? No. It is a requirement of life in a polite society. Laws only officially require you to do something that you already know must be done.
If you still see something in these laws that is designed to instill fear in bloggers, please let me know. We can discuss that further. It looks like many people instead of reading the law just let their fears loose. From what I see in the law, it only requires bloggers to be responsible citizens, as they have influence in the society.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Saturday April 26 2014, @07:22AM
Some interesting points but instead of arguing tid for tat I would like to make two key points.
Firstly registration as a prerequisite for speech is a ban on anonymous speech. Anonymous speech is important. If you are looking for logic behind the "axiom" then ask yourself why sites like SoylentNews and Slashdot allow Anonymous Coward posters instead of requiring everyone to register? As an example consider how difficult it would be for whistleblowers to release information without anonymous speech.
Secondly I believe it is very dangerous to start making laws about what can and cannot be said. I think there is always going to be a struggle between the desire for freedom and the desire for security. Laws provide us with security at the cost of freedom. A law against murder prevents us from being murdered at the cost of not being allowed to murder anyone else. A law against "inappropriate" speech might protect us against hearing inappropriate things, but it does so at the cost of not being allowing to say inappropriate things ourselves.
Now to some people, perhaps even the majority of people this might seem fine. The problem is that every law subjugates a minority of people. The classification of what is "knowingly false" or "pornographic" material is going to fluctuate greatly between different individuals. No matter what definition you use for these things, there is going to be a subset of people who disagree with the classification - minority opinions are going to be subjugated by the majority opinion. I think it is safe to assume that the subset of people who are going to disagree with murder being illegal is significantly smaller than the subset of people who will disagree with the definition of what is and isn't inappropriate speech. So the problem boils down to how large a subset of society are you willing to subjugate in order to enforce the beliefs of the majority?
There is that old saying, democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. While it might sound like a good idea to censor "knowingly false" and/or "pornographic" material, you are opening the door to further classifications of inappropriate speech. I'm sure there are some issues where you hold an opinion contrary to the majority yourself. If laws like this are allowed to propagate, one day you are going to find yourself in the minority rather than the majority. Are you okay with that? Personally I am not. I suppose ultimately it depends where your preference between freedom and security lies. For me I have always been heavily skewed towards freedom, because you never know when it might turn out that one of those "knowingly false" minority opinions is actually better and more accurate than the majority opinion.
(Score: 0) by tftp on Saturday April 26 2014, @09:20AM
ask yourself why sites like SoylentNews and Slashdot allow Anonymous Coward posters instead of requiring everyone to register?
Very few ACs are visible; if they post comments, they are down in the noise. You can say that even registered users are not registered... but we are, since we provided our email addresses to the administration of the site. We did it for our convenience, but as matter of fact we have registered. If I start spreading libel here, the victim may get a court order to find out who I am. I don't even think my audience is >3,000 because nobody reads SN just because of my comments. Still, all my comments are written as if I am publishing under my name IRL. Am I self-censoring? Of course; my parents told me many moons ago that it's bad to swear, so I don't.
Secondly I believe it is very dangerous to start making laws about what can and cannot be said.
Isn't it too late for that? Imagine going to the town square and shouting that the mayor and his family must be killed right now, and where they live. How long will you be allowed to do that? There is even nonviolent speech that is illegal - find a black man and speak in racist terms to him, with witnesses. Should it be legal or illegal? Again, it all depends on what society you are trying to build. You can create a North Korean regime, where everything that you say must be preapproved; or you can create a libertarian anarchy where the government does not care what citizens do unto each other, and for what reason.
Laws provide us with security at the cost of freedom
Yes; laws are the implementation of the founding principles of the society. You say: The problem is that every law subjugates a minority of people. - indeed, and that's practically by definition; who needs a law if nobody is going to break it? (There are no laws against teleportation.) Those who break the law, or those who are prevented from doing what they want to do because of fear of the law, become that subjugated minority. Murderers, fraudsters, thieves - and dissidents - they are all oppressed by the society. (By the government, or by a mob of people with torches and pitchforks in societies where the government has not been yet developed.)
While it might sound like a good idea to censor "knowingly false" and/or "pornographic" material, you are opening the door to further classifications of inappropriate speech.
As I said already, plenty of speech is already classified as inappropriate. This includes libel and slander. Bloggers do not have a license to spread lies for whatever reasons they may have (money being the most excellent reason.) MSM, such as newspapers and TV, do not have such a license. Dan Rather got fired for a poor due diligence. Remember Don Imus and his "nappy-headed hoes?" They were not free to say what they said.
I'm sure there are some issues where you hold an opinion contrary to the majority yourself.
Racist opinions would be a good example (not that I hold them.) They are contrary to the majority. Should they be allowed, on TV and radio, and in newspapers? Or, perhaps, homo{phobic,phylic} opinions, to the point of hiring/not hiring people because of their race, gender, religion, etc.? Or what if someone gets an idea that Jews are responsible for everything, and therefore must be expelled or killed? (Nothing like that had ever happened before; nothing to worry about </sarc>) There are many opinions that the society intentionally tries to suppress because the society has a good reason to believe that those opinions are harmful. History teaches us that humans, as a crowd, are pretty stupid, and a good manipulator can do whatever he wants with them. Examples of that are plentiful; hell, the whole human history is nothing but a history of lies and manipulation; start with the Old Testament and see for yourself.
In the end, though, the most basic question that we must ask is this one: "What is this society trying to do?" This question defines the society. I understand that some people on the Internet would want to live in a Wild West anarchy, where you have only one true friend - your gun. At least they think so, knowing nothing about the real life in a "dog eats dog" world. But the facts on the ground tell us that most people do not want to live in such free societies. They do exist on this Earth - take Somalia, for example. Not a paradise. People are gladly exchanging absolute freedom for some chains, hoping that the same chains will also prevent others from hurting them. This is because desire for freedom is not the main desire of a human. The main desires of any human are: life, food, shelter, procreation. They will sell everything else to gain those basics. I can understand why that is so; you can't be free if you are dead. Slave-owning societies would not exist for thousands of years if each and every slave prefers to kill his master and then die fighting. This teaches us that humans, in statistically large masses, are more like cattle. They can be herded, and they are herded. There are a few outliers, but they do not matter.
(Score: 1) by TheB on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:32PM
You can tunnel Tor over HTTP or SSH, so I don't think they can block it without blocking all encrypted traffic.
(Score: 1) by cykros on Friday April 25 2014, @03:18PM
Even that won't effectively work now, as when Iran did so, the Tor project released obfsproxy which is run on bridges and basically makes encrypted content look like cleartext xmpp packets to the deep packet inspection firewall, while still of course being nice and encrypted in actuality.
Now that we're passed that hurdle, I suspect it'll be a long cat and mouse game of new DPI rules and new network channel steganography from the tor project...you wanna entirely block Tor in a country, for now, that basically means cut the wires, as anything else can be worked around.
(Score: 2) by geb on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:16PM
It sounds like the Russian government has taken a few hints from the Chinese system, which despite its potential for abuse is actually quite good at stopping stupid rumours and misinformation.
I can see how somebody might be tempted to support rumour control. Of course, that only works if you trust the people doing the rumour control. Trust. Russian Government. Ahahahahahahaha... yeah right.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jasassin on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:23PM
which despite its potential for abuse is actually quite good at stopping stupid rumours and misinformation.I would prefer to be able to read all the rumours and misinformation because I know government's lie. This way, I can think about it all and decide what the truth most likely is.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 24 2014, @10:48PM
Another milestone in Putin's reign of tyranny.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by jasassin on Thursday April 24 2014, @11:10PM
Another unenforceable law. Was it Jefferson that had a quote on passing unenforceable laws? I couldn't think of the exact quote or who said it. Something about making the law a joke or something?
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday April 25 2014, @12:20AM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mendax on Friday April 25 2014, @01:14AM
Anonymous speech has been a cornerstone of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. We have the Jehovah's Witnesses to thank for a lot of the SCOTUS [supremecourt.gov] case law that has reaffirmed this right time and again. The latest that I can recall is Watchtower Society v. Village of Stratton, 536 U.S. 150 (2002) [wikipedia.org] overturned an ordinance which required door-to-door canvassers to first register with the mayor's office.
But a more interesting case [wikipedia.org] involved anonymous political speech. Justice Clarence Thomas, a jurist whom I feel cannot write anything except in crayon, wrote (or had one of his clerks write) a great concurring opinion that was essentially a history of anonymous political speech in early American history. It's work reading and you can find it here [findlaw.com] towards the bottom of the page.
What's important to note here is that the Russian government's steps here at required bloggers to register is nothing more than a first step in an attempt to eliminate dissent by those who with to express it but don't want to be put in the new gulags as a result. It's the repression of the dead Soviet Union all over again without the ideological reasoning. Now, it's pure tyranny. The ultimate result of this will be another time-honored Russian tradition: samizdat [wikipedia.org]. And with the proliferation of computers, the Internet, encryption software, and various offline digital media (e.g., CD's and portable thumb drives), it's going to be much easier to produce and distribute it through the underground than during the bad old days of the Soviet dissident movement [wikipedia.org].
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mendax on Friday April 25 2014, @05:28AM
I should also have written in my post something to the effect that is any government in this country starts to require you to register to communicate in any way, shape, or form and the courts uphold it, it's time for violent revolution because our basic liberties are then doomed.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by computersareevil on Monday April 28 2014, @07:20PM
Is there a country left on Earth that hasn't passed that milestone?