Russia clamps down on Internet, Google frowns

A court in Russia's far east has ordered an Internet provider to block five sites which it said disseminated extreme views, prompting Google to say the move restricted access to information.

Russian Internet provider Rosnet appealed to overturn the ruling by a district court in Russia's Far Eastern city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which is the only place the order applies, and which ordered Rosnet to limit access to the five sites that include the YouTube video service owned by Google. Rosnet President Alexander Yermakov told national media that his company had declined to block access to the sites, saying the judge was "incompetent" and that he was determined "to go till the end, till the Constitutional Court." Google, which runs the world's largest search engine, also criticized the court's ruling which ordered Rosnet to block its popular YouTube video site for having posted a film clip which the judge said fomented ethnic hatred.