Russia to start censoring pirate sites

While hints of censorship still make their way through the United States and Europe, Russia may set the bar as high as it can go in their fight against piracy by completely censoring sites. It’s been brewing for a while.

Just over two months ago Russia made some of its strongest steps yet against online piracy by introducing a formal system for rightsholders to have unauthorized content, or links to content, taken offline.

The system, dubbed Russia’s SOPA, forces sites to comply with copyright complaints in a swift manner or face their domains being added to a national blacklist. Being added to that register is a serious business, since all local ISPs are expected to blacklist corresponding IP addresses so that local Internet users cannot gain access.