Moscow court blocks Pussy Riot videos A Moscow court has ordered music videos by the activist punk band Pussy Riot to be removed from the internet after declaring its performance criticising Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church as "extremist." The court's decision will apply to four Pussy Riot internet videos, including their most famous and controversial performance in Moscow's Christ the Saviour cathedral, which resulted in two-year jail sentences for two of the group's members. The band has vowed to fight the ruling in court and it will be at least one month before the verdict takes effect, but the decision on the Pussy Riot videos appears to be latest step taken in Russia to curb internet freedoms and the first example of an order to remove a video for political reasons. This summer the country's parliament voted into law the creation of an internet blacklist that would allow portal sites such as Wikipedia and YouTube to be blocked if they did not comply with requests to remove specific web pages if they were considered harmful for children. The law came into effect on November 1 with an initial 180 sites on the blacklist, according to RIA Novosti, the state-owned news agency, although some have since been removed from it. Thursday's court decision comes as Russia prepares to participate in a global internet conference in Dubai next week, which will see UN members debate and renegotiate the rules of internet regulation for the first time in 24 years. Russia has pushed for reducing the authority of ICANN, the internet addressing agency under the control of the US department of commerce, prompting Washington and Brussels to warn of countries hoping to change internet regulation for anti-democratic purposes. Explaining her decision to block the Pussy Riot videos, Judge Marina Musimovich said that the clips, which showed the women dressed in brightly coloured clothes and singing obscenities, "humiliated certain social groups based on their religion." She continued: "There are hidden calls for rebellion and disobedience against the authorities, as well as organising mass disorder." The verdict comes two months after a different Moscow court ordered internet providers to ban access to the "Innocence of Muslims" video, which set off violent protests in the Middle East and north Africa. Ilya Ponomarev, an opposition MP and chairman of the Duma's committee on technology, said that while he could understand the ban on "Innocence of Muslims," the Pussy Riot ruling appeared to be a justification for the band members" guilty verdict and jail sentence. "One violation of law and justice leads to another violation of law and justice and eventually a violation of common sense," he said. This particular movie is not a source of violence. For the verdict to come into effect, internet companies such as YouTube, now owned by Google, and LiveJournal, the blogging platform popular in Russia, would first need to receive a court order containing the specific URL names that they were required to remove. While LiveJournal said it would comply with the request, with one person from the company noting that it was a priority for LiveJournal "to continue to operate in Russia," a person close to Google said it would make the decision once it received the court order. The person added that "Innocence of Muslims" was still accessible on YouTube in Russia because Google had never received a court order to remove it. The ban was meant to take effect from November 6.