With the internet, anyone anywhere can share almost anything to others, to even the most remote places on Earth, as long as the connection allows them to.
Acknowledging this, many governments have imposed their own regulations, in order to control what can and cannot be shared.
And one of the most strict, is Russia.
This time, a Russian man has been charged with “production and distribution of pornography” after he was found sharing Rammstein’s “Pussy” video on a social media.
According to the prosecutors, the man named Andrei Borovikov, could face years in prison because he shared the “Pussy” music video on social network VKontakte, a Russian social network, back in 2014.
Convicted at the Lomonosovsky District Court because of violating Article 242 in the Russian criminal code (distribution, public display or announcement of pornographic materials with use of mass media), Borovikov needs to serve three years in a high security prison in a high-security penal colony.
The "Pussy" music video which Borovikov posted came to the authorities’ attention when a former volunteer at Borovikov's office informed the police. The volunteer had secretly recorded his conversation with Borovikov about the video, during which Borovikov had deleted it.
Borovikov was charged in September 2020, over six years after he shared the video.
The case against Borovikov has been labeled as “utterly absurd” by Amnesty International.
“It is blatantly obvious that he is being punished solely for his activism, not his musical taste,” said Natalia Zviagina, Amnesty International’s Moscow Office Director, quoted an Amnesty's web page.
Amnesty International suggests that the Russian government wasn’t punishing the man for sharing the video, but for his campaigning.
“The Russian authorities should be focusing on turning around the spiraling human rights crisis they have created, not devising ludicrous new ways of prosecuting and silencing their critics,” Zviagina said.
Прокурор требует мне 3 года колонии строгого режима за клип Rammstein. Оглашение приговора 29 апреля в 15:30 в Ломоносовском районном суде г. Архангельск pic.twitter.com/RejiMMBDLB
— Андрей Боровиков (@borovikov_andre) April 28, 2021
“The prosecution of Andrei Borovikov is a mockery of justice, and we call for all charges against him to be dropped. The Russian authorities should be focusing on turning around the spiraling human rights crisis they have created, not devising ludicrous new ways of prosecuting and silencing their critics,” Zviagina added.
“The Russian government surely has better things to do than try its hand as a cultural critic. For example, it should be improving its dire record on freedom of expression, guaranteeing fair trial standards, releasing those detained for peacefully protesting, and putting a stop the politically motivated prosecution of activists.”
It should be noted that Borovikov who works as an environmental campaigner, was a coordinator for anti-Putin political activist at Alexei Navalny’s regional headquarters.
Navalny is the leader of the Russia of the Future party, and also the founding member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. He attempted to run for President against Vladimir Putin in the 2018 election, but was barred because of his prior criminal convictions.
Then in 2020, Navalny was hospitalized for about a month after he was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
In 2021, Navalny has been imprisoned in a corrective labor colony, and was reportedly tortured by Russian authorities.
Rammstein is a German Neue Deutsche Härte rock band founded in Berlin in 1994.
Rammstein was one of the first bands of its kind, which led to the media coining them the rock sub genre name. Commercially, the band have been very successful, earning many gold and platinum certifications in countries around the world. Their live performances often feature pyrotechnics, have contributed to its popularity.
With band members that include lead vocalist Till Lindemann, lead guitarist Richard Kruspe, rhythm guitarist Paul Landers, bassist Oliver Riedel, drummer Christoph Schneider, and keyboardist Christian "Flake" Lorenz, the band experienced rough start, until 1997 when the band's second album skyrocketed Rammstein to number one in Germany, resulting in a worldwide tour that lasted four years.
Rammstein is a band that remains relatively unchanged since it was first created. But despite its success, the band have been subject to some controversies, which include and not limited to: open propaganda, homosexuality, masochism, and other forms of perversions, violence, cruelty, and vulgarism.
Among the band's hits songs which have been criticized, "Pussy" was one of the most popular.
The music video for the song was released as the lead single from the band's sixth studio album, on 18 September 2009.
Ever since the song was released, it was met with controversies, because of the explicit lyrics, and the explicit nature of the music video.
The music video features the band members playing the song wearing leather outfits, taking the role of different stereotypical pornographic character.
Throughout the video, the band members are shown engaging in foreplay with the different women, before the scenes became more explicit towards the end, when the members are shown having unsimulated sexual intercourse with graphic nudity.
The video ends when all the band members ejaculated.
While body doubles were used during some of the close ups of specific body parts, and that none of the members really had sex in the video, and that the real compulation scenes in the video make it anti-mainstream.
It's the graphic nature of the sex inside a music video, that puts it to the extremity when compared to all other music videos that came before, and even after it.
Following Borovikov, Rammstein has commented on the situation, with guitarist Richard Kruspe on Instagram saying that he “very much regret[ted]” that Borovikov had been sentenced for sharing the band’s video.
“The harshness of this sentence is shocking,” he added. “Rammstein have always stood up for the freedom of art as a guaranteed basic right of all people.”
Borovikov was released from prison in May 2023.
He said that he felt drunk without wine, and was surprised to what have things become.
"How can you not consider the 2 years in prison for a Rammstein music video not a politically motivated case? 250 thousand VKontakte social network users did exactly the same (posted the exact same video). But it was only me who went to the jail for that. Of course it´s politically motivated case," he said.
" [...] when I went to prison in 2021, back then I thought that Russia was a full dictatorship. But what’s happening now, in 2023… I couldn’t even imagine something like this in 2021. I only could imagine something like this as a plot for a fiction book about some kind of “alternative Russia” fantasies. But now, there is the “Special Military Operation” (official Russian name for the war in Ukraine), mobilisation, all those losses.. And especially what’s going on in the heads of our Russian fellow citizens! What sort of views they have now, what kind of opinions, how much hatred some of our citizens express… I couldn’t even imagine something like this back then."
