MOSCOW, May 6 (RAPSI, Sergei Feklyunin) - The Moscow Commercial Court has accepted a lawsuit from YouTube LLC, owned by Google, against the Moscow branch of the Federal Service for the Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor), the court spokesperson told RAPSI, but did not specify the subject of the complaint.
The lawsuit was filed on April 30. The hearing has not yet been scheduled.
Presently, the Moscow Commercial Court is hearing the first claim filed by YouTube against Rospotrebnadzor. The company disputes the service's decision to blacklist a video posted on the website that, according to Rospotrebnadzor, contains a description of a suicide.
Earlier, Google, which controls the YouTube video hosting service, said they received an order to remove a video tutorial on special makeup. After blocking the video in question, the company decided to contest the decision in court. A Google representative said they did not believe the law On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development is aimed at limiting access to such entertaining information.
The consumer rights watchdog announced that over the past five months it has received some 1,700 reports of suicide-related content online.
The regulator said in March that YouTube remains the leading website in Russia in terms of the amount of content on suicide that it hosts, while not taking any action to improve the situation.
Also, Rospotrebnadzor reported that YouTube had been given the greatest number of orders (over 40) to block specific content.
Rospotrebnadzor has been authorized to oversee the removal of information promoting suicide and any online publications regarding this issue as of Nov. 1, 2012.