MOSCOW, February 19 (RAPSI) - The State Duma is working on amendments to the federal laws and regulations that cover mass media and the internet seeking to make bloggers responsible for their posts, Izvestia newspaper reports Wednesday.

According to lawmakers, the amendments are to set rules for bloggers who would be obliged to post online verified information.

“A blogger must be held responsible for his words, and act in a lawful manner,“ First Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma on Information Policy, Information Technology, and Communications Vadim Dengin said. In this case, bloggers will be subject to the rules imposed on the media by law.

A source in a working group within the State Duma Committee on Information Technology specified that if a blog exceeds 10,000 views daily (a figure currently mentioned in the draft), its author will be required to obtain journalist accreditation.

Blogger and media expert Edvard Chesnokov sounds skeptical about the legislative initiative. “We should remember that the internet is a decentralized network that can’t really be regulated by such measures. If you take the four most popular services, LiveJournal, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, they are legally and physically located in the United States. I don’t see how Russian officials can tackle the technical side of this and require blog authors on these websites to register as journalists or how viewer numbers can be estimated,” the blogger says.

Izvestia reports that the amendments will be further discussed by an expert council of the committee and high-profile bloggers.