In Moscow, the owners of three messengers were fined for violating the requirements of Russian legislation regarding organizers of instant messaging services.
The Magistrate Court of the Tagansky District issued rulings in the cases of Gultsch & Weiss GbR (developer of the Jabber/XMPP client Conversations), PageBites Inc (owner of the Imo messenger), and Threema GmbH (creator of the corporate messenger Threema).
Gultsch & Weiss GbR and PageBites Inc were found guilty under Part 1 of Article 13.39 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, for which each company received a fine of 800,000 rubles. Threema GmbH was found guilty under a more severe part of the same article and was fined 1,000,000 rubles.
The reason was the unfulfilled obligations imposed on organizers of information dissemination — in particular, the refusal to register in the Roskomnadzor system and provide encryption keys at the request of special services. These obligations are imposed on messengers included in the relevant register: Threema was added there in 2017, Imo — also in 2017, Conversations — in 2019.
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