In September 2025, Moscow Digital School hosted a lecture “Jurisdictional Aspects of E-Commerce.” During the event, Olga Magomedova, Researcher at the Gaidar Institute's International Best Practices Analysis Department, spoke about the specifics of online content regulation in Russia and other countries.
The global Internet network makes online content produced in one country accessible to users from other countries, which raises the question for lawyers: what law should be applied to online content? Legislators in different countries respond to this question in different ways. In the EU, the place of origin of the content provider is important, for example, the country of registration or business management. In China, the location of the servers is taken into account. In the US, the place where the offense occurred is more important, i.e., where the online content created negative legal consequences.
In Russia, the most difficult criterion to assess is the location of the target audience. Therefore, in 2021, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation formed a list of signs that content is “targeted” at a Russian audience, for example, one of the languages of the website is Russian, prices are expressed in rubles, and contact phone numbers with Russian codes are indicated. For Russia, clear criteria for online content to which Russian law can be applied are especially important because of the risks of extrajudicial blocking. Often in Russia, it is not a single page with illegal information that is blocked, but the entire website where such information is posted, which is a significant risk for online businesses.