It's nothing remotely similar to modern Russia, it's more similar to Stalinist USSR, where reading the wrong foreign thing was punishable with imprisonment.
This bill criminalizes access to censured foreign media.
> So no, nothing remotely similar to what you have in Russia.
Correct, it's worse. As of 2023, I don't believe people go to prison, (or get disappeared, shoved out of windows, or end up with terminal cases of polonium poisoning) for reading in Russia.
The bill doesn't criminalize anything, because it is not a law for god sake.
It's a proposal for a law that a small group of lawmakers drafted.
That draft is then reviewed, if it has any merit it goes to the House where needs to be debated, changed and voted, then goes to the Senate to repeat the process, before it can be sent to the president to turn into law.
Some bills are ridiculously bold, that's why very few become law and ZERO of them without lots of amendments.
Bold bills like this one get picked up by the media for obvious reasons, and some people read it like it's an imminent law to be enacted and enforced.
It is important to read them of course and to know who's behind them, because in America we have the opportunity to call our representatives to raise our concerns and complain.
It is not the first bold bill to be drafted and won't be the last one, that's why 96% bills don't go anywhere.
This is how our system works since 1789.
My wife is Russian by the way and grew up in the Soviet Union, so don't be ridiculous saying stuff like this.
You're splitting hairs. We're all aware that bills receive multiple readings. The point is that this will be an utterly horrifying piece of legislature, and in any free society, should never even have gotten a first pass in this state.
> so don't be ridiculous saying stuff like this.
I'll stop saying ridiculous stuff when lawmakers stop putting those ridiculous things into their bills.
Read the bill again and more carefully. It's easy to assume that transactions are financial in nature, but the bill defines data transmission as a transaction.
This bill criminalizes access to censured foreign media.
> So no, nothing remotely similar to what you have in Russia.
Correct, it's worse. As of 2023, I don't believe people go to prison, (or get disappeared, shoved out of windows, or end up with terminal cases of polonium poisoning) for reading in Russia.