Russia Bans YouTube

It’s true – Russia have blocked the popular video-sharing service YouTube, after a court dispute over an apparently extremist video, ‘Russia For Russians‘. With it, in the same fell swoop, Russia also blocked the Internet Archive, and three online libraries, all found to contain (or contain a copy of a website which contained) writings by Adolf Hitler. The decision was ruled by a court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

Russia is not the first of many governments who have blocked access to the viral video-sharing website. The list includes over 12 countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, Iran, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia and many more. Even if the website itself isn’t banned, many countries also filter or block access to certain videos – even including the U.K. and United States.

Aleksandr Ermakov, owner of Rosnet, the afflicted ISP, was furious about the decision.

All of mankind is using this website. And providers like ours do not violate Russian law. But we are still being forced to close the website so that our users can not log on and watch the videos. This is absurd! According to this logic, we have to demolish all buildings that have swastikas on the walls. Or when two people are discussing a bomb over the phone, we have to take away the phones from all people across Russia.

The pot is stirred when a comment from a Google Representative to the Moscow Times reads “To limit access of Rosnet users to the whole YouTube.com site, not to a particular video, breaches the right for freedom of information, guaranteed by Article 29 of Russia’s Constitution”.

We’ll have to see how this whole thing turns out.