The State Duma approved in the first reading penalties for non-execution of the law on messengers

Today, on Friday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a draft law on administrative fines for non-compliance with the duties provided for in the draft law on instant messengers, Interfax reports. The initiative was written by Marina Mukabenova, Deputy Chairman of the Information Policy Committee of the Duma (United Russia), Oleg Nikolayev (Fair Russia), and Alexander Yushchenko (KPRF), deputies.



Administrative responsibility is provided for “non-fulfillment by the organizer of information dissemination on the Internet, ensuring the provision of information and communication instant messaging services, statutory duties”. Violators face a fine of from 3 to 5 thousand rubles for citizens, from 30 to 50 thousand rubles for officials and from 800 thousand to 1 million rubles for legal entities.



Amendments were made together with the basic bill, the State Duma adopted it in the first reading on June 14th . At the same time, officials believe that the changes made to the legislation will protect the interests of both citizens and businesses. “Since today the volume of transmitted information via instant messengers has already exceeded the amount of information transmitted by traditional telecom operators, and also due to the fact that the owners have not proposed any measures to regulate their activities on their own, it was decided to support this bill,” the head of Information Policy Committee Leonid Levin.



The main bill proposed "to identify users using the subscriber number on the basis of an identification contract concluded by the organizer of instant messaging with a telecom operator". Accordingly, the messengers received "obligations to ensure the technical possibility of users refusing to receive electronic messages from other users, to ensure the possibility of sending electronic messages on the initiative of state authorities, as well as restricting the distribution and transmission of messages containing information that is distributed in violation of the requirements of the RF legislation.



New standards should come into force on January 1, 2018. The remaining time, officials suggest to use the owners of instant messengers in order to bring the work of their services in line with the new requirements.