Child-Safe Internet Plan Sparks Censorship Fears

By Jonathan Earle

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: February 6, 2013 (Issue # 1745)

MOSCOW Thegovernments plans toprotect children fromharmful online content are causing increasing alarm among anti-censorship activists, who see one regions plans tointroduce asmut-free version ofthe Internet as thelatest move tobanish distasteful speech.

Details ofthe Kostroma regions plan, which appeared inthe media last week, sparked talk ofa white list toaccompany thefederal governments existing blacklist ofwebsites that are deemed tocontain extremist information or child pornography, or to promote bad behavior.

Theplan would give net denizens inKostroma, amostly rural region about 190 kilometers northeast ofMoscow, theoption between using theexisting Internet, with all its dangerous andunsavory corners, anda clean version, consisting ofhundreds ofthousands ofinoffensive websites.

Anon-governmental organization called theSafe Internet League, which has close links toboth theKremlin andthe Russian Orthodox Church, has already picked 400,000 websites safe forchildren, andthe number is growing, theKostroma regional administration said Wednesday ina statement.

News reports quoting theleagues acting director, Denis Davydov, as saying that astrict parental control option would be thedefault, meaning that users would have toopt out rather than in, quickly sent bloggers andfree-speech activists intoa frenzy.

Connectivity advocate Matvei Alexeyev said theinitiative was probably illegal Article 29 ofthe Constitution guarantees theright tofreely seek, receive, transmit, produce anddistribute information byany legal way not tomention technically unfeasible.

There are more than 633 million websites inthe world, according toa recent estimate, Alexeyev wrote Friday ina blog post onEkho Moskvys website. When will thesite-by-site check be finished? In200 years?

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Child-Safe Internet Plan Sparks Censorship Fears