The arbitration court ruled that the Federal Drug Control Service may deprive a domain name of anyone for posting drug information on the site. №139-ФЗ (on protection of children) - not a hindrance

The adoption of №139- “On the protection of children”, which allows you to block websites on the Internet for placing information about suicides, pedophilia and drugs on them, has already caused a lot of criticism in runet. One-year practice in the application of this law showed that in most cases websites are blocked illegally, and the very decision by the authorized body to block it violates the rights of many other site owners on the same IP. At the same time, there is still no objective statistics confirming that in connection with the adoption of the new law on blocking websites in Russia, there was less teenage suicides, pedophiles and drug use.

However, what's the point of accepting all these new laws on filtering illegal content on the Internet, as well as trying to make the adopted law better when state bodies have other additional legal opportunities to take measures aimed at paralyzing the work of the site ?!


This conclusion was made by the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk Region , refusing a statement by the German company AdvertMedia GmbH to challenge the Federal Drug Control Service's instruction to remove the domain mercatos.ru from delegation.
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Let me remind you that earlier the Directorate of Federal Drug Control Service of the Sverdlovsk region sent to the registrar of the domain LLC Regtime an order to take measures to eliminate the circumstances contributing to the commission of crimes. In accordance with the above instruction, the registrar should have stopped the delegation of the domain http://mercatos.ru/ due to the fact that the site was found to announce the sale of JWH (cannabinol analogue), which is prohibited for distribution in the territory of the Russian Federation.

The German company Advertmedia GmbH turned out to be the owner of the free classifieds website, which reported that before this case it had no idea what JWH was, did not receive any complaints from drug police officers about the discovery of an illegal advertisement requesting it to be removed, and found out that the domain delegation was no longer available only by domain name.

In their prescriptions, the drug police refer to the rights granted to them for such actions by the Federal Law "On Operational Search Activity" and the Regulation on the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia, and also demonstrate a good knowledge of the Rules for registering domain names in domain zones .RU and . approved by the Coordination Center for National Internet domain, but completely ignore the requirements of the special provisions of article 15.1 of the Federal law "on information" and keeping the register of the Rules approved by Government Resolution №1101 from 26.10.2012 city in which sufficient detail actions UFSKN employees in the event of information about the sale of narcotics. Are such actions of the Federal Drug Control Service ignorance of the laws to be applied, or demonstrate the ability to paralyze the site in many other ways, which reduces the effectiveness of the new provision of Article 15.1 of the law on information to protect the rights of site owners to zero?

As the drug police write in their recall , “this method of blocking illegal content is set as a“ complementary legal measure ”to restrict access to the site in order to increase the effectiveness of countering the sale, acquisition, inducement to use, illegal advertising and drug propaganda using the Internet”

At the same time, the main measure itself, which prescribes a preliminary notification of the site owner about the presence of illegal information on the resource, was not taken, to which the court’s attention was drawn.

Attempts to block the site bypassing the procedure for blocking illegal content regulated by a special law are not the first time taken by law enforcement agencies. The ability to block a site by putting pressure on registrars, hosters and providers without applying legal procedures for working with the registry shows that in addition to the rules on blocking sites provided for by law, today there are many other faster ways to shut down a site.

At the same time, the Arbitration Court, refusing to satisfy the complaint, explains that this order of the Federal Drug Control Service was not binding, since By virtue of the provisions of the Rules for the registration of domain names in the zone .RU and. The RF, the registrar is entitled, but not obliged, to cease delegation of the domain name.


However, it is quite obvious that the registrar did not bother to study clarifications of the CC , and withdrew the domain from delegation immediately after receiving the FSKN order, although clause 4 of the clarification states that this procedure does not apply to a significant network resource. Bulletin board of course is. The registrar should have refused to comply with the instruction of the UFSKN also on the basis that there was no information about the exhaustion of reasonable ways of communicating with the administration of the resource, the hosting provider, or their refusal to delete the information. Otherwise, the registrar himself had to take steps to notify the domain name administrator of the existence of such a prescription.

During the pre-trial resolution of the issue, it turned out that the Rules did not establish the procedure for interaction between the registrar and the authority that sent the order to restore the domain delegation. The domain administrator immediately after receiving information about the presence on the site of illegal content deleted the ad, however, to quickly restore the site under a domain name, in respect of which a serious advertising campaign was launched, it was impossible.

The registrar and the Federal Drug Control Service transferred to each other the obligation to verify the site in order to make sure that the advertisement that caused the blocking was deleted. A completely natural question arose: how can the UFSKN employees verify that a wrongful ad has been removed from the site if the site for the domain name does not work entirely ?!

As a result of the joint unlawful actions of the Registrar and the Federal Drug Control Service, the site was not accessible by the domain mercatos.ru for 33 days. The total damage for the specified period is estimated at more than half a million rubles. Telephone calls, e-mails and calls to www.webnames.ru , as well as the Federal Drug Control Service did not give any result. The German company managed to restore the site to the same domain name only after transferring the domain from one registrar to another.

The decision of the Arbitration Court claims to establish a rather flawed law enforcement practice, in accordance with which law enforcement agencies can promptly take away the domain name from the site owner without resorting to the use of the regulations provided for by Federal Law No. 149- “On Information”, with a preliminary notification procedure the site owner, and in the case of non-compliance with the requirements - to block

This decision of UFSKN, which was supported by the Arbitration Court, demonstrates another reason why many site owners do not risk placing their sites in the .RU domain zone and hosting themselves in Russia. Otherwise, according to the logic of the court, each site owner must perform round-the-clock moderation of the content posted by users. How UGC oriented sites should work in such conditions is absolutely incomprehensible. Obviously, this violates the entire logic of the operation of such sites in the network and makes it impossible for the trading business to operate in the Russian domain zone.

Currently he is preparing to file an appeal against the decision of the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk Region of September 25, 2013 and the statement of claim against the registrar, who “independently decided to block the domain”. I would like to hope that justice will be restored and the guilty will be brought to the appropriate civil liability.

Details of the case AdvertMedia GmbH.VS Federal Drug Control Service here