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On Feb. 16, a Roskomnadzor official mentioned corporations that didn’t comply by the tip of the month would face penalties. Along with fines and doable shutdowns or slowdowns, the penalties might disrupt advert gross sales, search engine operations, knowledge assortment and funds, in line with the regulation.
“For these corporations that haven’t began the process for ‘touchdown’ we’ll take into account the problem of making use of measures earlier than the tip of this month,” Vadim Subbotin, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, instructed the Russian Parliament, in line with Russian media.
Human-rights and free-speech teams mentioned they had been dissatisfied that a few of the tech corporations, usually seen inside Russia as much less beholden to the federal government, had been complying with the regulation with out public protest.
“The ulterior motive behind the adoption of the touchdown regulation is to create authorized grounds for in depth on-line censorship by silencing remaining opposition voices and threatening freedom of expression on-line,” mentioned Joanna Szymanska, an professional on Russian web censorship efforts at Article 19, a civil society group based mostly in London.
Mr. Chikov, who has represented corporations together with Telegram in circumstances towards the Russian authorities, mentioned he met with Fb final 12 months to debate its Russia insurance policies. Fb executives sought recommendation on whether or not to tug out of Russia, he mentioned, together with slicing off entry to Fb and Instagram. The corporate complied with the legal guidelines as an alternative.
Mr. Chikov urged the tech corporations to talk out towards the Russian calls for, even when it leads to a ban, to set a wider precedent about preventing censorship.
“There have been instances when the large tech corporations have been leaders when it comes to not solely know-how but additionally in civil liberties and freedom of expression and privateness,” he mentioned. “Now they behave extra like massive transnational companies securing their enterprise pursuits.”
Anton Troianovski and Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.
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