Kremlin Cracks Down On Internet Memes

The Russian government has cracked down Internet memes, with a court in the nation ruling that ones featuring celebrities are unacceptable if the resulting image "has nothing to do with the celebrity's personality". This applies to any celebrity in the nation, but spawned as the result of one common Russian meme in particular featuring a saccharine sweet singer with obscene text overlaid — the amusing part, of course, being that the saying is something unlikely to be said by the singer himself.

The news comes from Russia's Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications, more commonly known as "Roskomnadzor", which relays that one cannot use celebrity photographs to make memes in Russia, with certain exceptions. This itself spawned from a Moscow court ruling recently about singer Valeri Syutkin and a common Russian meme (shown below) found to be violating his privacy.

The meme features the text "Bei Babu po Ebalu", an offensive lyric from a Russian song dating back to 2005. It became popular a couple years later to use the lyric in memes, and eventually the singer Valeri Syutkin — who has a reputation for sweet romantic songs — became the Internet's favorite face for the meme.

It is that juxtaposition that makes the meme, but with the new law, which is vague enough to be applicable to many memes, it is no longer acceptable. Some have expressed concern that this will lead to larger instances of Internet censorship in the nation.

SOURCE: Global Voices