[x-pubpol] YouTube Fights Russia's New Censorship Law

[Joly MacFie]

http://mashable.com/2013/02/12/youtube-russia-censorship/

By Alex Fitzpatrick

YouTube filed suit Monday against a Russian law that lets government
regulators take a website offline or block content without a trial if
it's considered harmful to children.

The lawsuit comes after Russian regulators blocked a video titled
"Video lesson on how to cut your veins =D," in which a young woman
demonstrates how to fake cutting your wrists. The Russian officials
argued the video was glorifying suicide and thus was illegal under the
new law, reported the Wall Street Journal [1]

Russia enacted the law in November with the goal of protecting
children from websites that show images of sexual abuse of children,
promote drug use or encourage suicide. The law almost immediately drew
the ire of free speech advocates, who argue that it's vague and can be
used to target websites for political reasons.

YouTube's lawsuit is the first legal challenge made against the law.

"In this case, we have appealed the decision of Russian consumer
watchdog because we do not believe that the goal of the law was to
limit access to videos that are clearly intended to entertain
viewers," said Google, which owns YouTube, in an emailed statement to
the Journal.

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324880504578299900516580918.html

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