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Putin Wages War On Internet Porn, Bans PornHub - Vandita



Russia’s telecommunications supervisor Roskomnadzor has blocked 11 pornographic websites including the widely popular PornHub following a district court ruling that the sites violated Article 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation which includes bans on illegal distribution of pornographic materials as well as child porn. Roskomnadzor warned in its statement that distributing illegal pornographic content online is punishable by a prison term of two to six years.

“It is established that the websites contained pornographic material prohibited by law (images, videos, movies),” the court ruled in September. PornHub, which is hosted in Canada, is domestically bound by Section 163 of the Canadian Criminal Code, which proscribes pornographic images depicting people under 18.

“We can confirm that Roskomnadzor has blacklisted PornHub in Russia and we are currently investigating and considering available means to reinstate our website in Russia,” a PornHub spokesperson said in an email statement.

Activist Olga Borisova asked the Russian watchdog if they had an alternative to PornHub. Roskomnadzor replied, “Dear Lola, alternatively you can meet someone in real life.” Then she asked whether there was anyone ‘beautiful and decent’ at Roskomnadzor; to which the answer was ‘sure’.

According to user data collected by PornHub in 2014, Russian users showed a greater preference for anal sex videos than those from Western countries including the US, UK and Canada. It also found that anal sex featured in under 6% of searches specifically for gay material, less than the 7.24% of straight searches.

Following the ban on porn sites, Russia also banned the Yahoo! Screen video streaming service, after several requests from Roskomnadzor demanding the removal of an ISIS propaganda video were apparently ignored. The video, used by the terrorist group for global recruiting, had been included on Russia’s ban list registry, making it illegal.

The country is desperate to curb Internet freedom. In August, Russia blocked access to Reddit over a thread about growing psychedelic mushrooms, and later blacklisted Wikipedia over a page about a form of cannabis. Both bans were eventually lifted after the pages were edited to meet Roskomnadzor’s demands.

In February, Putin banned over 100 porn sites on similar grounds, though that list did not include PornHub. The country banned celebrity memes a couple of months later. Russia banned the Internet Archive in June over a single page with questionable ties to terrorism. Roskomnadzor even threatened to ban Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
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