Restrictions on Online Information Dissemination in the Context of Constitutional Rights and Freedoms

The paper is devoted to analysis of restrictions of information dissemination on the Internet, their relationship to the constitutional rights and freedoms and their implementation. The purpose of the paper was to analyze the restrictions on the information dissemination on the Internet in the context of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens. The objectives of the paper were to analyze the concept of "information", to identify the types of prohibited information, means of dissemination, the parties responsible for the information dissemination on the Internet, regulation of the unified register of prohibited information, to analyze the case law in the field of restrictions of constitutional rights and freedoms related to the spreading of information on the Internet and to forecast the future development of legislation and case law in the specified area. On the basis of the analysis performed the following conclusions were made. Firstly, the current statutory definition of the term "information" allows to interpret it as widely as possible, and blurs the boundaries of the concept of "information dissemination". Secondly, the prohibitions on the dissemination of some types of information are located in a non-systematic fashion, which leads to problems during law enforcement. Thirdly, existing case law shows that the courts formally approach to the consideration of cases on prohibited information dissemination on the Internet. This may lead to restriction of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens. Fourthly, at the moment, there is a trend for filling gaps in the legislation regarding the Internet and creation of its separate regulated segment. The implementation of such a course in case of creation of Russian autonomous segment of the Internet with groundless restrictions of the access to other segments of the global network may lead to a significant restriction of constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens.