VLADIMIR KHARITONOV v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT – SEPARATE OPINION courts too are responsible, as they failed to identify the unlawful nature of Roskomnadzor’s actions, failed to have regard to the criteria established in the Convention (see paragraph 45 of the judgment) and failed to restore lawfulness. Our esteemed colleagues put the blame elsewhere. In their opinion it is the Information Act that is the source of the violation of the Convention. More precisely, it is because the Act is not sufficiently foreseeable as to its implementation that the interference in the present case is held not to be “prescribed by law”. We respectfully disagree. We consider that the Russian Information Act is not as such incompatible with the Convention. The content of section 15.1, subsection 5(1), is in fact very similar to that of acts regulating the same issue in other States of the Council of Europe (see the 2017 comparative study on blocking, filtering and take-down of illegal internet content, conducted by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law on behalf of the Council of Europe and available at https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/study-filtering-blockingand-take-down-of-illegal-content-on-the-internet). In the present case, it is the application of the Act that is problematic. 9. This brings us to the issue of execution of the present judgment. The problem encountered by the applicant is by no means an isolated one. As is noted in the judgment, millions of websites have been blocked merely because they shared an IP address with some websites featuring illegal content (see paragraph 41 of the judgment). The problem, if not systemic, is in any event widespread. In our opinion, it would have been sufficient to change the administrative practice (of Roskomnadzor) and the judicial practice (of the domestic courts). Reparation within the meaning of the Convention could have been achieved without the legislature having to intervene. However, given that the judgment concludes that section 15.1, subsection 5(1), of the Information Act does not satisfy the foreseeability requirement under Article 10 of the Convention, the full execution of the judgment will now require an amendment to the Act. We can only hope that this will be done within a reasonable time. We would like to stress, however, that Roskomnadzor and the courts should not wait until the act has been amended in order to change their own practices. The execution of the judgments of the Court is a matter for all the domestic authorities concerned (see, specifically with respect to the duty of the domestic courts “to ensure, in conformity with their constitutional order ..., the full effect of the Convention standards, as interpreted by the Court”, Fabris v. France [GC], no. 16574/08, § 75, ECHR 2013 (extracts)). Roskomnadzor and the courts can thus pave the way for a later amendment of the Information Act. 21

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