Footnote: could happen almost anywhere. Even here in NL such a law
   could pass on the virtue of balancing safety and order with basic human
   rights in a fair manner.

   Footnote2: censorship being possible and even easy makes censorship
   happen. Defend or die must be part of the tech warrior's creed (sharing
   Mutual Equal Assured Destruction is a potential exception).

   I suppose Belarus works differently for things to pass so fast and so
   clearly in violation of international human rights laws.

   Good luck out there.

   On Dec 21, 2014 12:26 PM, "Anton Nesterov" <[1]komachi@openmailbox.org>
   wrote:

     Today President of Belarus signed a law which provides heavy
     regulation
     to freedom of speech. Basically, it makes any website media and
     forbids
     "information aimed at the propaganda of the war, extremist
     activities,
     or the calls for such activities, pornography, violence, cruelty,
     and
     any other informations which distribution can harm national interest
     of
     the Republic of Belarus, or forbidden by this law, or by any other
     legislative act of the Republic of Belarus". It also force owners of
     websites to moderate user-generated content. Any website which
     violate
     this will be blocked. Also the law forbids any media with more than
     20%
     of foreign investors.
     The law was passed really fast, only on 17st it came info
     parliament,
     and today, 21st, it's already signed by president. Nobody ever heard
     that such law are coming, even in the rumors.
     The law will came into force on 1st January.
     Yesterday domain name [2]onliner.by, which hosted Belarusian media
     portal,
     was seized. They moved to [3]onliner.ru.
     Media portal [4]21.by was also blocked.
     Two days ago some media was blocked, including [5]charter97.org
     (they was
     already blocked for years for some users), [6]belaruspartisan.org,
     [7]gazetaby.com, [8]zautra.by, [9]udf.by, [10]naviny.by,
     [11]belapan.com, [12]belapan.by.
     Minister of Information Liliya Ananich asked media to use only
     official
     sources and write articles in the national interest of the country.
     Besides media censorship, there is some financial problems because
     of
     Russian financial crisis. So the govt blocked 13 online markets
     which
     posted prices in US dollars, also 3 websites ([13]deal.by,
     [14]migom.by,
     [15]kufar.by) was warned as they had ads on goods with price in $.
     [16]prokopovi.ch, p2p currency exchange, was also blocked.
     [17]http://www.pravo.by/main.aspx?guid=12551&p0=H11400213&p1=1 —
     text of the
     law (Russian)
     [18]http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/ (Russian)
     [19]http://belapan.by/archive/2014/12/21/748603/ (Russian)
     [20]http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/ (Russian)
     [21]http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/290031/ (Russian)
     --
     [22]https://nesterov.pw
     GPG key: 0CE8 65F1 9043 2B11 25A5 74A7 1187 6869 67AA 56E4
     [23]https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc

References

   1. mailto:komachi@openmailbox.org
   2. http://onliner.by/
   3. http://onliner.ru/
   4. http://21.by/
   5. http://charter97.org/
   6. http://belaruspartisan.org/
   7. http://gazetaby.com/
   8. http://zautra.by/
   9. http://udf.by/
  10. http://naviny.by/
  11. http://belapan.com/
  12. http://belapan.by/
  13. http://deal.by/
  14. http://migom.by/
  15. http://kufar.by/
  16. http://prokopovi.ch/
  17. http://www.pravo.by/main.aspx?guid=12551&p0=H11400213&p1=1
  18. http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/
  19. http://belapan.by/archive/2014/12/21/748603/
  20. http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/289548/
  21. http://www.belaruspartisan.org/politic/290031/
  22. https://nesterov.pw/
  23. https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc