PRESS: Duma panel rejects bill on e-mail blocking for banned info

MOSCOW, Jan 13 (PRIME) -- The state building committee of Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, has not upheld a bill by senator Andrei Klishas on blocking the e-mails for distribution of banned information, business daily Kommersant reported on Monday.

The initiative, submitted by a group of senators, headed by Klishas, in October 2019, seeks to impose on the e-mail services the same obligations as those laid on the messengers and sets on them an equal notion of “an organizer of a message exchange service.”

The bill obliges the e-mail services to block users’ option to send e-messages if they distribute the banned information on request of a federal agency within 24 hours with a fine for owners up to 1 million rubles.

The committee said that the idea would entail vast consequences not only for e-mail services, but for all Web services, including social networks and chats. The bill would unreasonably expand the requirements and raise costs of software maintenance.

The State Duma’s information policy committee will study the document later in January.

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