Russian lawmakers submit legislation to take control of online news aggregators

Russian lawmakers introduced controversial legislation today that would saddle online news aggregators with wide-reaching regulations. The country's Internet industry has strongly opposed such measures, ever since politicians started discussing the need for new controls, several years ago.

Committee members in the Duma told the news agency TASS that the legislation will undergo significant revisions before it's sent to the floor for a second vote. For instance, the law's current wording would make online news aggregators legally responsible for reproducing news reports (meaning they could be sued for automatically reproducing defamatory stories, or prosecuted for republishing texts found to be extremist). Committee members in the Duma say this part of the legislation should be removed.

In its current wording, the law would apply to news aggregators with more than 1 million daily visitors. The bill's authors want to create a registry, maintained by the state censor, containing all major news aggregators. In the event that a story is reported and republished containing false information about a “socially relevant topic,” Russian law enforcement could then appeal to the censor, which would in turn take steps to kill the story. (The legislation proposes stiff penalties on news aggregators that fail to comply with censors' takedown orders.)

The law would also prohibit foreign states and international organizations from owning news aggregators, directly or indirectly, and foreign companies and foreign citizens, in general, would be banned from owning more than 20 percent of a single news aggregator.