Russia Considers Banning Sex Online in the Daytime

Can you imagine going to YouTube following a link on Twitter to watch some video recommended by a friend as a funny one (though NSFW) and since you are not at work, you feel perfectly safe clicking the link to watch it as this is exactly the activity you want to be involved in right now. And all of a sudden, instead of seeing the familiar player interface loading the video itself, you are served an error message reading something like “Sorry, this content is not available at your location at the moment. You will be able to watch this video in 2 hours.”

Sounds like a crazy joke to you? It definitely sounds as one to me but unfortunately in some countries this may really turn into reality - and it is really not good to know that this is exactly what might happen in Russia where I myself live.

The latest crazy idea of some of the Russian parliament members is to implement limitations to the online content in the same manner that they are already applied to TV content. This is all done with one definitely good purpose - protection of children and teens - but unfortunately the measures proposed don’t sound any good to me at all.

The latest draft law introduced suggests that sex and porn should be prohibited online in the period from noon to 6 p.m. for children. The reasoning is pretty clear: children spend their mornings at school and in the evening their parents are back from work and this particular period is the time when children can turn their computers on unattended and be exposed to some content that is not exactly intended for children’s eyes at all.

So it is suggested that access to explicit content online should be prohibited during this time period - even if it may sound technically impossibly to people actually working online and publishing content, especially given that what we publish once (day or night) will stay online forever unless we decide to remove it and can be accessed by anyone at any time.

It is obvious that internet here is taken as some wider analogue of television. On TV here in Russia we will never see any sexually-explicit content in the daytime. In fact, even ads for beer will only appear here late in the night because they are supposed to have negative effects on children and teens that have higher chances of watching TV during the day - and are supposed to be asleep by the time the ads make their appearance.

But unfortunately for the draft law creators, on TV the content is way much easier to control as specific channels broadcast specific content and can face certain rules and regulations they should abide to. Unfortunately online the number of publishers is enormous and to many of those national legislation does not apply at all as they live (and run their websites) abroad entirely.

But the worst problem here is availability of websites that are based purely on user-generated content - even owners of such websites frequently have very limited tools to control what content is uploaded by the users, let alone when exactly the users choose to upload their content, even if it can be classified as sexually explicit.

Of course the main question here is exactly how this is supposed to be implemented at all as everyone who uses internet at all knows that this is probably the most time-ignorant place on Earth where you can easily chat to a friend some 12 time zones away and forget about those time zones before you see that your friend goes offline exactly when you only begin your own working day. And if the above factors are not enough somehow, it is very challenging to only imagine all the new technologies that should be developed only to make this ridiculous idea turn into reality.

But no matter how ridiculous this may all sound, the new idea will be considered by the Russian parliament - the Duma - in late January when they will have to decide if content should be limited online both in terms of what it represents and when it is made available online to children. Though I can’t help but wonder if they should probably make all the parents owning a computer at home attend some specific education courses to learn about various tools available (some of them should be provided for free as well) to execute parental control instead of regulating the content itself which always seems to be too much of a challenge online anyway.

And the summary here is the usual one: no one will be able to control the content consumed by children online better than their parents can. Fortunately, there are already plenty of tools for parents to install and use that will enable them to only ensure access to safe information for their children - and those parents who are smart and educated enough already use them around the world, Russia included (though here the percentage of such parents must be incredibly tiny given the overall lack of online culture).

And if a parent fails to understand the importance of parental control and implementing some specific tools to guard their children from the content that they would not want the children to be exposed to, no legislation will help - even the ridiculous laws like the one proposed now.

Via (in Russian)