We‘ve long talked about the problems that come along with government mandating ISPs to act as copyright police by blocking so-called „pirate“ websites. The issues with these attempts are many, ranging from their muted impact on piracy to concerns over just how a website is deemed to be a „pirate“ website to the inevitable collateral damage sustained by non-infringing sites. With the last of those, you can pretty much set your watch to the stories of innocent sites being caught up in this sort of censorship. Still, the breadth of this particular problem likely escapes many people.

To get a handle on the sort of scope we‘re talking about, we can take a look at Russia.