RKN began to block foreign hosting sites under the “landing” law

Roskomnadzor (RKN) has limited access to 8 out of 12 foreign hosting providers for failure to comply with the law “on landing”, follows from the list on website departments. Previously, the RKN did not apply such measures as part of the requirements for foreign IT companies.

Since the end of March, RKN has blocked the sites Kamatera, WPEngine and HostGator.com, and since April – Network Solutions, DreamHost, Bluehost, Ionos and DigitalOcean. Also on the list of foreign hosting providers subject to restrictive measures are Amazon Web Services Inc., GoDaddy.com LLC, Hetzner Online GmbH and FastComet.

Since September, hosting providers included in the list have been labeled for violating Russian legislation, and then banned from search results. In January, all companies on the list, with the exception of FastComet, were fined for a total amount of over 367 million rubles. for failure to fulfill obligations to organize the activities of a foreign legal entity on the Internet in Russia (Part 2 of Article 13.49 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).

According to the “landing” law, foreign IT companies with more than 500 thousand visitors per day in the Russian Federation must create representative offices in Russia, a feedback form and create personal accounts on the RKN website. From December 1, 2023, the requirements became more stringent: hosting providers were required to enter a special RKN register, as well as identify their clients by payment, phone number or documents.

On the responsibilities of foreign hosting providers in the Russian Federation – in the Kommersant material “Roskomnadzor has counted to twelve”.

Lusine Balasyan