(Source: http://42.tut.by/452449?print=1)

The State Duma has passed a bill that is called “the right to oblivion” on the Internet by the media in the third reading. It requires the search engines to remove the links to information about a citizen from the search results at his or her request.

According to the bill, a user may require to remove false and irrelevant information about him or her, as well as other data violating the law. The exceptions include the information about the events containing elements of criminal offenses (until expiration of a criminal prosecution term).

The law also affects foreign Internet search engines distributing advertisements addressed to Russians.

The law will come into force on January 1, 2016.

After harsh criticism and discussions of lawmakers with the Internet community, the amendments were prepared for the second reading. On June 30 deputies have passed the bill in the new edition that took some proposals of the industry into account. In particular, they excluded a provision requiring the search engines to delete the links to valid information older than three years from the results. Instead, the citizens should be given the right to require to remove the links to irrelevant information (that lost its value for the applicant by virtue of subsequent events or actions of the applicant).

Other changes included the right of search engines to ask for an identity document of the citizen who addressed them. In addition, the citizen must necessarily present a certain link to the information that could be excluded from the search results, as well as his/her name and surname. In addition, the period of consideration of requests from citizens has been increased from 3 to 10 working days.

The list of approved proposals included the exclusion of websites searched only by their own pages from the scope of the law.