The caricature saga continues, with a Russian government agency announcing plans to shut down Bankfax, a popular online news website. The announcement comes after an anonymous reader posted the now-famous caricature on the Bankfax forum along with a number of inflammatory remarks.
The agency responsible for the decision is the Siberian branch of the Federal Service for Media Law Compliance and Cultural Heritage. It said that Bankfax ‘must be held responsible for the information it disseminates’ — a stringent standard of liability, given the practical impossibility of moderating public fora in real time.
The irony of all this is that the cartoons, however offensive, are now more widely available than ever.
