Russia

Summary

Russia presents high legal risk for crawling. Criminal Code Art. 272 criminalises unlawful access to protected computer information; Art. 272.1 (added by Federal Law No. 421-FZ, in force 11 December 2024) creates a new specific offence for the illegal collection, storage, use, and transfer of databases containing personal data obtained through unlawful means, with penalties of up to 300,000 RUB or four years imprisonment, escalating to 10 years for aggravated cases. Federal Law 149-FZ (Information Law) governs the internet environment broadly. Federal Law 152-FZ (Personal Data) imposes strict data-localization requirements — as of 1 July 2025 (Federal Law No. 23-FZ) all collection, storage, and processing of Russian citizens' personal data must occur on servers located in Russia, without the previous processor-delegation workaround. The Civil Code Part IV Art. 1334 creates a database producer's exclusive right protecting substantial investment (rebuttably presumed for databases with 10,000+ elements), functionally equivalent to the EU sui generis right but classified within Russia's related-rights framework. There is no TDM or research scraping copyright exception — the exception list in Part IV Ch. 70 is closed. Fines for personal-data violations rose to up to 18 million RUB effective 30 May 2025 (Federal Law No. 420-FZ). Roskomnadzor enforcement has become markedly more active. No scraping-specific case law exists in English-language sources.