"Heavy porn": how they are imprisoned in Russia for watching adult videos

Probably, every person at least once in his life, at least with one eye, "for fun" and for other fictional reasons, watched porn. And, it would seem, what is deadly in this? Adults have the right to choose what to watch.

But there is nothing "deadly", and there is plenty of criminal! After all, recently, people in uniform have been catching malicious violators of the law who are interested in these "cynical, vulgar images of genitals", and even put them in prison! Read more about this in our material.

We will immediately clarify that we are not talking about perverts who like to watch sex with minors, but about ordinary Russian citizens, lovers of, so to speak, "standard" porn. According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, it is not prohibited to watch such videos, but distributing them and showing them to someone is a completely different matter. And it is precisely because of the inability to distinguish the difference between "personal use" and "distribution", since 2015, 19 residents of the Saratov region have become "criminals". And two of them even got a real sentence.

An employee of the pre-trial detention center, one pensioner, a combatant, a man who was in prison for robbery, several unemployed, military contractors, an ordinary family man and employees of various companies were convicted of distributing pornographic content in the region.

During the operational search activities, law enforcement officers calculated the violators and charged them under paragraph "b" of part 3 of Article 242 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Distribution and public demonstration of pornographic materials using mass media". The media in this case also includes information and telecommunication networks, including the Internet. To put it simply, by saving a video with a mark of 18+ on your Vkontakte page, you automatically become its "distributor" and, accordingly, a violator of the law.

This is considered a serious crime, for which you can get from two to six years in prison. In addition, people caught in this "crime" may be deprived of the right to hold certain positions for 15 years.

In order not to accidentally join the ranks of "criminals", remember the following few rules:

How does "catching criminals" happen? 

First, the operatives calculate (how — it is not specified) the user of the social network, on whose page the "forbidden" videos are stored. These materials are downloaded to DVD media in the presence of witnesses using a "publicly available program". The disk is transferred for examination and, if the fact of the offense is confirmed, a criminal case is initiated against the person.

In order to identify and solve the "crime", the guards can ask for help from the administration of Vkontakte. In such cases, she is obliged to provide information about when a person registered in the social network, how and when he last edited his page and, if necessary, the content of all personal messages for the entire time of using the service.

This was the case with an employee of the SIZO-2 of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Saratov region, who received two years of probation. In the materials of his case, among the "evidence of guilt" is "an extract of personal messages in the period from 2011 to 2018." What exactly was found in his correspondence is not specified, but it can be assumed that the man sent the video, for example, to his girlfriend or friend, so to speak, so that they "check it out".

As for the rest of the "malicious violators of the law", most of them were also seized in criminal proceedings the equipment with which the video was "distributed": laptops, smartphones, tablets and even Wi-Fi routers.

We hope that this story will become an example for you, because observing simple safety rules, these 19 Saratov residents would not have been in the dock.