The European Court of Justice has determined that spreading RT content is a criminal offense. With a July 2 judgement, the ECJ has upheld a sentence by the State court in Saarbrücken against three bloggers accused of running videos from RT, which is banned in Germany, through the conspiracy-theory-prone website traugott-ickerot.com. The defendants risk a three-month to five-year prison sentence. The website was taken over by the police.
With the ECJ sentence, now any prosecutor in the EU can proceed against websites and media that reproduce material from RT.
The original sentence in Saarbrücken says: “Operators are prohibited from broadcasting or enabling, facilitating or otherwise contributing to the broadcasting of any content by the legal persons, entities or bodies listed in Annex XV, also by transmission or distribution via cable, satellite, IP-TV, Internet service providers, Internet video sharing platforms or applications, whether new or pre-installed.” (Annex XV lists RT)
