21 December 2014 New Belarus Web Censorship Law and Shutdowns Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 11:09:36 +0000

From: Anton Nesterov <komachi[at]openmailbox.org>

To: cypherpunks[at]cpunks.org

Subject: Latest Belarusian censorship law & censorship actions Today President of Belarus signed a law which provides heavy regulation

to freedom of speech. Basically, it makes any website media and forbids

"information aimed at the propaganda of the war, extremist activities,

or the calls for such activities, pornography, violence, cruelty, and

any other informations which distribution can harm national interest of

the Republic of Belarus, or forbidden by this law, or by any other

legislative act of the Republic of Belarus". It also force owners of

websites to moderate user-generated content. Any website which violate

this will be blocked. Also the law forbids any media with more than 20%

of foreign investors.



The law was passed really fast, only on 17st it came info parliament,

and today, 21st, it's already signed by president. Nobody ever heard

that such law are coming, even in the rumors.



The law will came into force on 1st January.



Yesterday domain name onliner.by, which hosted Belarusian media portal,

was seized. They moved to onliner.ru.



Media portal 21.by was also blocked.



Two days ago some media was blocked, including charter97.org (they was

already blocked for years for some users), belaruspartisan.org,

gazetaby.com, zautra.by, udf.by, naviny.by, belapan.com, belapan.by.



Minister of Information Liliya Ananich asked media to use only official

sources and write articles in the national interest of the country.



Besides media censorship, there is some financial problems because of

Russian financial crisis. So the govt blocked 13 online markets which

posted prices in US dollars, also 3 websites (deal.by, migom.by,

kufar.by) was warned as they had ads on goods with price in $.



prokopovi.ch, p2p currency exchange, was also blocked.



http://www.pravo.by/main.aspx?guid=12551&p0=H11400213&p1=1  text of the law (Russian)

http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/ (Russian)

http://belapan.by/archive/2014/12/21/748603/ (Russian)

http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/ (Russian)

http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/290031/ (Russian)



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