Support The Moscow Times!

Government to Hire Child Porn Detection Staff

A Russian state Internet and media watchdog has launched a tender for staff who can identify pornographic material involving minors.

The ideal candidate would be educated to university level and have at least two years' work experience in medicine, sociology, psychology, philology, culture studies or art history, the watchdog Roskomnadzor said.

Under the tender, staff working in teams of two will field up to 200 requests a day and review various materials to establish whether they contain child porn.

The maximum price tag for an unspecified number of people to spend a year weeding out child porn is 43.7 million rubles ($1.4 million), the tender's outline says.

Announced earlier this month, the tender closes on Nov. 12.

Since November 2012, Roskomnadzor has not needed a court order to blacklist websites hosting child porn and those deemed to be promoting suicide or illegal drugs.

The agency already faced criticism over some blacklisting decisions, particularly a ban on Japanese erotic cartoons, hentai, some of which were ruled to be child porn.

Russian law criminalizes the production and dissemination of both regular and child pornography, but gives no strict definition of either.

This lack of legal clarity has rendered the ban on regular porn de-facto unexercised and has confounded lawmakers, who have repeatedly tackled the issue, but who remain unable to spell out a legal distinction between pornography, erotica and art.

Sign up for our free weekly newsletter

Our weekly newsletter contains a hand-picked selection of news, features, analysis and more from The Moscow Times. You will receive it in your mailbox every Friday. Never miss the latest news from Russia. Preview
Subscribers agree to the Privacy Policy

A Message from The Moscow Times:

Dear readers,

We are facing unprecedented challenges. Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization, criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution. This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent."

These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia. The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate, unbiased reporting on Russia.

We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help.

Your support, no matter how small, makes a world of difference. If you can, please support us monthly starting from just $2. It's quick to set up, and every contribution makes a significant impact.

By supporting The Moscow Times, you're defending open, independent journalism in the face of repression. Thank you for standing with us.

Once
Monthly
Annual
Continue
paiment methods
Not ready to support today?
Remind me later.

Read more