State Duma gets bill banning software to cheat Web site blocking

MOSCOW, Jun 8 (PRIME) -- A bill to ban using technologies to skirt blocking of Web sites has been submitted to Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, according to the house’s electronic database seen by PRIME on Thursday.

The initiative is aimed at improving the effectiveness of limiting access to legally muted resources. The bill offers to forbid in the country “information and telecommunication networks and programs for computers” that make possible to access blocked sites.

Various means are currently used to avoid blocking. Norway’s Opera Software added in 2016 a free virtual private network (VPN) option to skirt limitations and change IP addresses.

The communications service said earlier that anonymizers and other programs allowing people to skirt blocking should not be banned, because they have a wide sphere of useful application.

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