By Olga Razumovskaya
MOSCOW--Russia's most popular search engine Yandex N.V. (YNDX)
was blocked for 23 minutes by state-controlled telecoms company
Rostelecom (RTKM.RS) over a controversial "blacklist law" which
blocks websites that could be harmful to children.
A regional Russian court has requested that the IP addresses of
about 100 websites offering the purchase of narcotics and
psychotropic drugs be blocked due to their content. The decision by
the Maykop City Court of the Adygeya Republic forced Rostelecom to
block the websites and temporarily suspend Yandex in several
Russian regions.
Yandex said on its official blog that this was a
"misunderstanding" and that an official request for clarification
had been sent to Rostelecom.
The law, which took effect Nov. 1, gives communications
regulators the authority to block access to content considered
"hazardous to the health and development" of children by
"promoting" drugs and suicide.
Critics of the law say it is vaguely drawn and could be used to
censor Internet content, a charge denied by authorities who say the
law has been working well.
In February, Google Inc.'s (GOOG) video unit YouTube LLC filed a
lawsuit against Russian regulators over the law. In late November
YouTube.com briefly landed in the Russian government's new registry
of banned websites, but within minutes of the first tweets about
feared Kremlin censorship of the Internet regulators restored the
video-hosting site, citing a "technical error."
Write to Olga Razumovskaya olga.razumovskaya@dowjones.com
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