Russian Celebrities Can Now Ban Unflattering Memes Of Themselves

After mercilessly (and shirtlessly) taming the Russian wilderness for years, President Vladimir Putin and his governmental media regulation authority Roskomnadzor have recently turned their sights on the internet.

Late last year, they passed a law which required all bloggers with more than 3,000 readers to officially register with the organisation and conform to their standards for larger media outlets. This also includes the infamous blanket ban on profanity. And, just a couple of months ago, they also began blocking sites which expressed dissent against the government.

Now, this week Roskomnadzor have issued a statement which specifies and elaborates on existing legislation to outlaw all internet memes, or more realistically, the ones which public figures don’t like.

“Violation of legislation on personal data in relation to public figures includes creating a fake account on behalf of a public person, creating a site for a public personality, and using the photo as a public person in a popular internet meme that is unrelated to the identity of the celebrity,” the regulatory body wrote (in very roughly translated Russian).

This is all to avoid “defaming the honour, dignity and business reputation of the public person”, and according to Global Voices it comes from a specific case.

This week singer Valeri Syutkin  — who seems to be some kind of Russian Michael Bublé — sued a local pop culture site for posting his face in a meme which featured offensive lyrics from this objectively terrible song.

The letters BBPE here stand for “bei babu po ebalu” which translates to something like “smack the bitch in the face” — a phrase which fake Bublé would of course never say. Because of this, Syutkin won the case and this reportedly prompted the Roskomnadzor to specify their regulations.

Having not yet been put into practice, we don’t know exactly how this meme ban will look like. Theoretically, it could include practically Everything On The Internet from Sad Keanu to Tom Cruise Hanging Off Stuff but, as The Washington Post point out, any of the public figures depicted would have to take their complaints directly to the Roskomnadzor for any action to be taken.

This means that it will most likely just involve local celebrities with too much time of their hands, and old mate Vlad.

With this in mind, we’ve probably seen the last of Sadimir Putin, but Vladimir Putin Taming The Wild should be just fine. That meme is the best propaganda you could ever have.

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