MOSCOW, February 6 (RAPSI) – Since October 1 of 2017, the Russian media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, has blocked over 600 mirror websites of online resources banned in Russia, the watchdog’s statement reads on Tuesday.

The websites in question included mirrors of illegal torrent trackers and online movie theaters popular in Russia. According to the law, such search engines as Yandex, Mail.ru, Sputnik, Rambler and Google are obliged to stop providing the search results related to these websites.

On October 1, the law on blocking of mirror websites came into force.

President Vladimir Putin signed the law on July 3. It was drafted based on examination of practice of blocking forever websites, which repeatedly and illegally distributed information containing objects of copyright and (or) related rights, or information required for procurement thereof with the use of data telecommunications networks. The examination has revealed some deficiencies including inapplicability of prompt measures regarding automatically created “mirrors” of the blocked websites.

The law introduces the term “derived Internet site” (mirror website) into Russian legislation and prescribe the procedure of access restriction to such webpages on grounds of rights holders’ reference to the Moscow City Court. The law also obliges search systems providers to delete information on such websites from the search results.