Internet censorship in Romania is mainly related to the filtering of sites with pornographic content hosted in

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

. Although several proposals have been made to censor pornographic sites so far not one site has been blocked.

Legislation

The ''Law on Prevention and Combat of Pornography'' (No. 196/2003) says that all pornographic sites must be accessible only after entering a password and after the patron paid a tax per minute of access. Also, such activities must be authorised by a commission of the Ministry of Culture and Cults, which will include representatives of the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. All sites which feature paedophile, necrophile and zoophile pornography are banned."Legea privind prevenirea şi combaterea pornografiei", Nr. 196/2003, ''Monitorul Oficial al României'', Partea I,. nr. 342 din 20 mai 2003 The sites which do not respect this law may be added to a

black list Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...

by the National Authority of Regulation in Communications and the ISPs which do not filter out the sites in the list within 48 hours will be fined 10,000-50,000 lei (3,400-17,000 USD). The sites are added to the black list after denounces from private citizens, sites which are then verified by the Authority.

Blocking of pornographic sites

On December 11, 2008, the National Authority for Communications proposed to block 40 sites under the anti-pornographic law, all of which were hosted in Romania. The list of sites was not made public, in order to discourage their promotion. The president of authority claimed that these sites were freely accessible, not by a password, as the law requires, and as such, it was possible to be easily accessed by children. One of the 40 sites proposed for blocking is a site which is not pornographic: 220.ro, one of the biggest

video sharing An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...

websites in Romania (344,000 unique visitors per week). As of November 2011, none of the sites have been blocked in Romania and the proposals have been ignored.

Online forums censorship proposal

In August 2010, a Social-Democrat Senator, Lia Olguța Vasilescu, proposed a law to ban the usage of

profanity Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, rud ...

on the

internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

s of the Romanian press, requiring the online press to moderate the content. Accused of wanting to protect the politicians from criticism, she replied that the purpose of her law is for the protection of children who might encounter profanity while browsing the internet. The proposal was largely ignored and no action was taken.

Sports betting censorship

Online sports betting was illegal in Romania until the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 77/2009 passed in 2009 which legalised online gambling but only with a government granted license. In 2013 the Romanian National Gambling Office was formed to regulate and license online gambling in Romania. A total of 18 companies now hold approved status with the government still blocking those without an official license. Whilst the ONJN deem it illegal to bet on unlicensed sites in Romania they can not restrict access to other informational data present on those sites.Stupoare printre pariori! Un nou scandal după ultima măsură aplicată de ONJN: "Curg sesizările la OPC"
gsp.ro 11.12.2015

References

{{Europe in topic, Internet censorship in

Censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...

Censorship in Romania