Owners of websites to take responsibility for comments left by users – Information Minister
The law that regulates publishing information on the Internet is to be completed, Liliya Ananich, Belarus’s Information Minister, said on Thursday.
A number of amendments to the decree ‘On Measures to Improve the Use of the National Segment of the Internet’ have been drafted. In accordance with them, owners of websites will take responsibility for the content of comments that are left by users on their sites.
As of today, owners of online resources are responsible for illegal content posted, including material considered to be extremist information or ‘other information that is capable to make harm to the national interests of the Republic of Belarus’.
People enjoy the benefits of state regulation of the Internet, Ananich states.
“State regulation of this field is crucially needed and citizens lay certain hopes on it. Inspections are carried out, websites are closed down due to their of drugs, etc. Destructive practices on the Internet must be stopped,” the Information Minister said.
On January 1, 2015 the Belarusian Ministry of Information gained the right to decide what can and cannot be published on websites. Now the Ministry of Information is empowered to order which content should be removed even to the websites that are not registered as mass media. In case of disobedience a defiant website may be blocked. The law on media was amended by the parliament on the Q.T. In December, 2014. The amendments might have been caused by the forthcoming presidential elections.
In late December a number of independent online media were blocked (charter97.org, naviny.by, prokopovi.ch, belaruspartisan.org, belapan.by).
OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović said that amendments tightening government control of the Internet in Belarus pose a major threat to free speech and free media.
“These amendments are based on vaguely formulated legal provisions and give the state the vast right to interfere with any information posted on the Internet,” Mijatović wrote in a letter to the authorities in Belarus on 18 December. “They also impose quasi-censorship functions on disseminators of information”.
