(Photos: Forbes)

Source: Forbes

The attempts by the state to "clean up" the internet have to date provoked nothing but derision. What could change in the coming months? The unified register of domain names, website page indexes and IP addresses which enable the state to identify sites containing information banned in Russia has been in operation for six months. The milestone was marked by this story about the blocking Yandex. If we were to sum up the register’s work so far, the numbers are impressive: according to the latest data from the RosKomSvoboda Project, 314 domain names and pages, and 178 IP addresses have been added to the register. Given that tens and even hundreds of websites can be hosted on a single IP address, the overall scale of the blacklisting amounts to serious state interference in freedom of information in Russia. [Read more]