New Russian Law Criminalizes Searching for Pussy Riot Videos

The Russian parliament passed new legislation on Thursday, July 17th, that makes it a punishable offense to merely search for content deemed “extremist.” In the process, lawmakers criminalized looking up some of Pussy Riot’s videos.

The law, which will take effect in September, targets people who “deliberately searched for knowingly extremist materials.” The government’s justice ministry defines such content with a running list of more than 5,000 entries that includes websites, political slogans, books, artwork, and music.

In 2012, several Pussy Riot videos were added to the justice ministry’s list of “extremist” content, including performances of their songs “Free the Cobblestones,” “Kropotkin Vodka,” “Death to Prison, Freedom to Protest,” and “Putin Has Pissed Himself.”

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The fine for deliberately searching for this prohibited content would be as much as 5,000 rubles ($64). Additionally, the penalty for advertising virtual private networks (VPNs) that enable access to such content is up to $2,500 for individuals and up to $12,800 for companies.

Tellingly, even some of the Kremlin’s most loyal allies have criticized the legislation. As reported by The Washington Post, Yekaterina Mizulina said the law would prevent her organization, the League of Safe Internet, from monitoring critics of the government.

“It turns out that under the new law, the League for Safe Internet will not be able to transfer data on extremist communities to the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” she wrote on Telegram. “They will ban us from monitoring extremism.”