Peskov demanded from Western IT giants to pay fines

During the press call, Peskov commented on the situation with Google, which the Russian courts ordered the day before to pay fines of 32 million rubles for refusing to delete prohibited information.

“Of course, the fines that have been issued must be collected according to the law. We are glad to see international giants, but they are obliged to comply with Russian laws", - Kommersant quoted Peskov as saying.

When journalists asked if Russia was planning to introduce the Chinese method of control on the Web, Peskov noted that "Russia is a sovereign country in which Internet regulation is carried out in the manner that is best applicable to our country".

The public concern and media issues were raised on September 14 by the Tagansky Court of Moscow against Twitter, Facebook and Telegram. A total of 35 million rubles were collected from them. for providing access to prohibited content under Article 13.41 of the Administrative Code. To date, the total amount of fines imposed on Google by Russian courts exceeds 32 million rubles. A significant part of the fines is made up of decisions on penalties related to the refusal of a resource to remove from public access information that Russian laws prescribe to be blocked.

In early September, it became known that the Moscow Arbitration Court, at the request of a commercial organization from Nevinnomyssk that sells sheep products, banned Yandex and Google from displaying Smart Voting in search engines.

The reason for filing claims against "Google" and "Yandex" was the appeal of LLC "Vulintertrade", which is engaged in the trade in sheep wool. In the summer of this year, Rospatent, with lightning speed, secured the Smart Voting trademark for this company. Market participants note that it usually takes Russians at least a year to register a trademark. LLC "Wulintertrade" indicated that it has the exclusive right to the trademark and the use of the designation "Smart Voting" by companies as one of the search keywords when indexing sites, according to the court's website.

Lawyers and supporters of Alexei Navalny said that they consider the court's decision to be illegal, since "Smart Voting" is not a subject of commercial turnover, but part of the socio-political agenda. It has been used by supporters of Alexei Navalny for many years without the purpose of extracting commercial benefits.

On September 16, a meeting of the Federation Council Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty was held, at which the non-compliance by IT companies with Russian legislation regarding the removal of prohibited content was discussed. According to a Google spokesman who also attended the meeting, the corporation is now negotiating with regulatory authorities in order to routinely resolve all legal issues and disagreements with the regulator. The meeting discussed the issues of removing from the search engine, as well as from the Apple store, the application of the Russian oppositionist Alexey Navalny "Smart Vote" due to the connection of this project with the FBK* (recognized as an extremist organization and banned on the territory of the Russian Federation, included in the register of foreign agents) and affiliated with him by persons.

Earlier, the chairman of the commission to investigate the facts of foreign interference in the internal affairs of Russia, Vasily Piskarev, threatened IT corporations with tougher responsibility for violating Russian legislation if corporations continue to fail to comply with Roskomnadzor's orders. Responsibility will be introduced not only for the organizations themselves, but also for the people working in it.

It became known the day before that Rostelecom, under the guise of “providing subscribers with stable access to the Internet,” proposed to ban access to the use of Google's public DNS servers.

* - Anti-corruption foundation (FBK)- recognized as an extremist organization whose activities were banned on the territory of the Russian Federation. In addition, the organization is included in the register of NPOs performing the function of foreign agents on the territory of the Russian Federation.