The head of Roskomnadzor read a lecture on censorship and boasted of blocking Rutracker

On February 9, the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, gave a lecture to MSU students and answered questions from future journalists, whom he called his colleagues. The lecture was broadcast on the Internet through Periscope live.

“Very often in the media and blogs, one can observe discussions about civil rights and freedoms, in which the concept of“ freedom of speech ”is elevated into a kind of absolute that cannot be limited by any framework. The notion of responsibility is always lost in these disputes, which is always an integral part of all civil liberties, ”Alexander Zharov voiced his main thesis and explained:“ Roskomnadzor is often accused of being a censorship body. But censorship involves viewing the article or other information before it is broadcast or printed. And we are already responding to the fact. Therefore, we have no censorship. ”

The official said that more censorship exists in western countries. For example, an FBI agent bursts into a television studio and stops broadcasting a movie that he didn’t like . And "the work of both the BBC and Reuters is engaged - they are absolutely dependent on society and voluntarily or unwittingly follow its ideology." Therefore, the work of Russia Today journalists is much more objective, Zharov said.

Alexander Zharov complained that his department has a bad reputation, they are considered a punitive body that only locks resources. In fact, this is not the case: “We are not only observing, controlling and punishing. We still allow a lot of things, ”said Zharov and recalled that Russia has a mechanism for voluntary registration of the media. Roskomnadzor also deals with the protection of personal data of Russian Internet users. To protect Russians from corporations, a law was passed obliging foreign companies to store such data in Russia.
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Kommersant writes that Alexander Zharov was the first to mention the topic of blocking Rutracker. He boasted about the achievements of his department: “In the case of the Rutracker portal, the decrease in traffic reached more than 75%. This is a turning point: advertisers will leave and his business will end in a few months. ”

“I hope he will not check if we are downloading movies from torrents,” the sophomore at the gallery nervously giggled. “And my mobile phone right now is shaking the show to watch it in the evening,” her friend replied gloomily. “It seems that they will take me ten years straight from here.”

"It was necessary to download, like me, through eight proxies," boasted her companion.
^"Kommersant"

Several questions from the audience were devoted to this topic. One student asked if the ministry was going to block Tor and anonymizing programs: “My personal opinion is that such methods are hopeless at this stage,” answered Zharov. - And only 5-7% of our citizens use them. Therefore, our task is to block negative information, and your task is to tell citizens that Rutracker are pirates who take money from our producers of movies and books. ”