Access to two of the world's largest pornography websites has been blocked by the Russian media watchdog, Roskomnadzor. Internet Service providers have time until Tuesday to implement the ban.
The websites have now displayed a message "by a decision of public authorities" on their homepage explaining why they have blocked the users.
Previous year, 11 popular porn websites were blocked by the authorities as most of them
failed to protect children "from information harmful to their health".
After the ruling by two separate courts that the websites "spread pornography," the decision was taken to ban the two porn websites.
In Russia, and it is very unusual for them, Sexual explicit contents are not outlawed, but this law bans "the illegal production, dissemination, and advertisement of pornographic materials and objects".
Roskomnadzor, the government agency which maintains the list of the blocked websites includes thousands of them.
They even blacklisted Wikipedia at one point of time.
There has been outburst over the ban from open rights campaigners and warned that local ban can be defeated.
"Blocking porn is the fastest way to ensure widespread adoption of censorship circumvention in your country," said Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
While one of the affected porn sites offered Roskomnadzor a premium subscription in exchange for lifting the ban, but they refused the offer and said that it was "not in the market" for such an offer.
The websites have now displayed a message "by a decision of public authorities" on their homepage explaining why they have blocked the users.
Previous year, 11 popular porn websites were blocked by the authorities as most of them
failed to protect children "from information harmful to their health".
After the ruling by two separate courts that the websites "spread pornography," the decision was taken to ban the two porn websites.
In Russia, and it is very unusual for them, Sexual explicit contents are not outlawed, but this law bans "the illegal production, dissemination, and advertisement of pornographic materials and objects".
Roskomnadzor, the government agency which maintains the list of the blocked websites includes thousands of them.
They even blacklisted Wikipedia at one point of time.
There has been outburst over the ban from open rights campaigners and warned that local ban can be defeated.
"Blocking porn is the fastest way to ensure widespread adoption of censorship circumvention in your country," said Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
While one of the affected porn sites offered Roskomnadzor a premium subscription in exchange for lifting the ban, but they refused the offer and said that it was "not in the market" for such an offer.