The Supreme Court opened hearings Tuesday into the complex question of whether all web sites can be considered mass media.

The court will decide if web sites that are not registered as mass media can be shut down under mass media laws, including those aimed at extremism, and if web-based mass media can be shut down for extremist comments posted on their forums.

The Supreme Court may deliver the ruling by the end of April, spokesman Pavel Odintsov said.

The federal law on countering extremism allows authorities to ask a court to shut down a media outlet after issuing two warnings for publishing extremist materials.

Extremist activities listed by the law include promoting hatred based on ethnicity, social status and profession, as well as calling for a violent overthrow of the government.

Under the Criminal Code, individuals who promote extremism face up to three years in prison; the punishment can reach five years if they do it through mass media.

The Supreme Court is also weighing whether the mass media are allowed to publish information about the private lives of public officials.

This right is supported by the media commission of the Public Chamber, which discussed the issue Monday.

"Any word or action of a public person has to be discussed in the mass media, because an official always stays an official," said Pavel Gusev, head of the commission.

Oleg Panfilov, head of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said the court had no right to impose any restrictions on web sites because mass media laws do not regulate the Internet.

"They want to control the Internet, but this is foolishness," Panfilov said.

Panfilov also said imposing restrictions on publishing private information about officials would violate Russia's obligations to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

In March 2009, Kemerovo prosecutors charged an opposition activist, Dmitry Solovyov, with hate speech for posting someone else’s critical comments about law enforcement officials on his blog.

In July 2008, a court in Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi republic, handed blogger Savva Terentyev a one-year suspended sentence for a controversial post saying police officers should be “burned at the stake” in city squares from time to time, “like in Auschwitz.”