In the midst of the Russian government’s tightening control on Internet use, Intel has shut down all of its Russian-language developer forums, blaming the country’s new ‘Blogger Law’ that became effective on 01 January 2015.
Users of the Russian developer forums are now being redirected to post on Intel pages hosted on third-party sites including Habrhabr, or to its own English developer forums outside of Russia.
As part of the latest crack down, blog post contributions will be disabled; forum contributions will be disabled; in addition to turning off all commenting for Russian content.
Intel issued a statement saying that the latest move is aimed at complying ‘with the Russian Internet Bloggers Law’ and the changes ‘will be implemented to Russian Intel Developer Zone community as of January 1st 2015’.
"These changes do not affect the English Intel DZ community: you can publish articles, blog posts and communicate in forum in English."
The new policy, which was signed into law in April 2014 by President Vladimir Putin and supported by the Kremlin, requires news agencies, journalists, and bloggers to register with the state.
As per the law, the Russian government will have rights to levy fines on those failing to comply with media policies.
Last month, Google also confirmed plans to shut its Russian engineering office following the launch of restrictive laws that have curbed internet freedom in the country.
