UPDATE: Moscow court finds blocking LinkedIn legal, move comes in force

(Adds comments on blocking in paragraphs 6–7)

MOSCOW, Nov 10 (PRIME) -- The Moscow City Court sided with a lower court’s decision to block LinkedIn, a U.S. business and employment-oriented social network, on Thursday and the move has come in force.

The Civil Code says that a decision of the court of appeals becomes valid immediately, and the social network will be blocked on the country’s territory within three days upon receipt by LinkedIn of the court’s decision.

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media said in October that it had asked the network twice to notify the authority on how it respected the law on localization of personal data, but did not get any clear response.

The authority went to a lower Moscow court in August, which backed up the service. LinkedIn appealed against the move.

The law obliges Internet companies to store personal data of citizens on the country’s territory. Web sites of perpetrators are included in a special register and can be later blocked.

The communications service’s press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky said the authority will send an order to connection operators to block LinkedIn in the country upon receipt of the statement of reasons from the court, which usually takes a week.

“As a rule, judging by previous cases, such decisions of courts come to the communications service within a week after hearings,” Ampelonsky said.

LinkedIn had more than 400 million users worldwide as of the end of 2015, including 5 million in Russia.

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