The draft law proposes adding Part 3 to Article 13.21 of the Code of Administrative Offences. Part 3 stipulates administrative fines for creating or disseminating media products that contain obscene language.

An explanatory note to the draft law explains the need for introducing these amendments by the fact that the federal law On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development, hereinafter referred to as the federal law, lists information containing obscene language among banned information (Part 2 of Article 5). Moreover, no responsibility for creating or disseminating media products that contain obscene language is included in the law. Consequently, the authors of the draft law believe that its approval will help to contribute to the information security of minors.

However, Part 2 of Article 13.21 of the Code of Administrative Offences already specifies administrative responsibility for violations of the established procedure for disseminating among children media products that contain information harmful to the health of children and/or their development. Under Part 2 of Article 5 of the federal law, information that contains obscene language is treated as belonging to various types of information harmful to the health of children and/or their development.

Consequently, Part 3 of Article 13.21 of the Code of Administrative Offences being stipulated by this version of the draft law would compete with the current Part 2 of this article, thereby enabling public officials to arbitrarily choose the various clauses to be used in any particular case.

In addition, the explanatory note to the draft law fails to substantiate the need to stipulate a deadline for enacting the draft law, which would be different from the general deadline stipulated by the legislation of the Russian Federation.

Based on the aforementioned aspects, the Government does not support the current version of this draft law.