The Russian communications authority has ordered providers in the country to block 11 pornographic sites, including the Russian part of PornHub. Earlier this year, PornHub was already blocked in the country due to the alleged presence of child porn on the site.
The communications watchdog Roskomnadzor has blacklisted 11 porn sites based on a ruling by the Krasnodar District Court. By far the largest site on the list is PornHub, which ranks 64 in the Alexa list of 100 most popular sites worldwide, although it is not known how popular the Russian part is in Russia.
The Krasnodar District Court ruled that the sites violated Article 242 of the Russian Penal Code. It is not known which actions exactly contravene that law. Critics say the article is vaguely drafted and prohibits “illegal production, distribution and public display of pornography.” It is not specified in more detail what is meant by ‘illegal’, nor does the law give a definition of ‘pornography’.
In March of this year, providers in Russia also had to block PornHub, when the reason was mentioned that there was child porn on the site. Roskomnadzor has broad powers to blacklist sites. Often it concerns a few pages with information that according to the authorities is in violation of the law, but as more and more sites switch to encrypted https connections, providers are forced to block entire sites.
This recently happened briefly with Wikipedia, which had a page online about some sort of hash with ‘illegal’ info. Roskomnadzor indicated in August, according to the Russian news agency Tass, that he was also legally authorized to block the entirety of Facebook, for example. The service regularly allows sites to be blocked and unblocked.