Legal Regulation of Blogging as Mass Communication Activities

Abstract The purpose of this study is to reveal key issues of the current legislation in the sphere of regulation of blogging. The timeliness of the research is determined by the changes in the legal status of bloggers and those who organize the dissemination of mass information on the Internet introduced by the blogger’s statute. The research examines some scholarly approaches to determining the specifics of the blogosphere. It also studies the rules and application practice of the blogger’s statute, international standards to regulate bloggers’ activities, and approaches to regulating blogging in the CIS countries. It is argued that the blogger’s statute does not sufficiently address the specifics of the blogosphere and this statute is not always applied in judicial practice. In Russia and other CIS countries, when regulating blogging, some specificity of the Internet is taken into account. However, the specificity of the blogosphere is hardly taken into account, which is inconsistent with international standards and the European Court of Human Rights position.