Russia Asks Opera to Implement Site Blocking Filters in Its Turbo Mode

Roskomnadzor has had secret meetings with Opera representatives, during which Russia's communications regulator has asked Opera Software to implement a site blocking feature in Opera's Turbo Mode.

The meetings took place in Moscow earlier this fall, and according to Russian newspaper Kommersant, no decision has been reached yet.

Opera Turbo Mode has been used bypass blocklists

Turbo Mode is a feature added in Opera 10 as a way for users on slower Internet connections to speed up their web browser. Since then, the feature has been added to Opera's mobile browser as well, where it has allowed the browser to gain a much larger market share than it ever had on desktop.

The way Turbo Mode works is by interposing Opera's cloud servers between the user's browser and the website he wants to visit. Opera's servers will retrieve the website and optimize it by compressing code and images, resulting in a much smaller payload, which gets sent back to the user.

The side-effect of this cloud-based web browsing system is that Opera Turbo Mode allows users to bypass loca blocklists, like the ones implemented in Australia, the UK, China, and Russia. This is because users don't connect to the blocked website, but to Opera's servers, from where they download their content.

Roskomnadzor has been slowly expanding Russia's blocklist

Roskomnadzor has been very active in the past few years expanding Russia's blocklists to any website which Russian authorities consider illegal. This sometimes included Wikipedia, Reddit, and various social networks, but these were only banned for small periods of time.

Recently, Russia has banned LinkedIn, torrent portals, and a slew of adult websites, such as PornHub and YouPorn.

Despite its best efforts, Russia users knew that by using proxies, VPNs, and Opera's Turbo Mode they could go around Roskomnadzor's blockade.

Decision delayed by Opera's sale

In the meeting that took place between the Russian agency and Opera's management, Roskomnadzor proposed that Opera honor its blocklist by implementing it inside the servers used for Opera's Turbo Mode.

Opera hasn't provided a final answer for Roskomnadzor's proposition because the company is in the middle of an acquisition to a conglomerate of Chinese companies led by Qihoo.

Furthermore, Opera had closed its Moscow offices since then, making communication even harder between the two parties.

The meeting didn't discuss implementing the same blocklist at the level of Opera's built-in VPN, which the company added this fall with the formal release of Opera 40.

Is Opera about to commit reputational suicide?

If Opera agrees to Roskomnadzor's request, there's nothing stopping other countries from requesting the same thing, and especially aggressive copyright protection groups such as RIAA and the MPAA.

Opera's reputation has been already damaged after users have found out about the Chinese acquisition. If the browser maker gives in to Roskomnadzor's request, you can rest assured its leftover userbase is going to jump ship to another browser within days or weeks, putting an end to one of the Internet's older browser projects.

Just like SourceForge once admitted it was bundling adware with some downloads, Opera may commit something that in business speak is called "reputational suicide."