Pavel Durov was arrested in France on August 24 by French police and detained for a few days before being released on €5,000,000 bail and surrendering his passports. The globe trotting Founder/CEO of Telegram and one of Russia's wealthiest billionaires was indicted on six charges, including child pornography, fraud and drug trafficking. The French authorities basically accused him of being personally responsible for every crime or misuse committed by any Telegram user worlwide. This is despite Durov being a French citizen with a record of engaging in charitable activities in France.
Durov was arrested on a warrant issued by L'office mineurs, the agency responsible with protecting children from harm. French authorities alleged that there was no way to get in touch with Telegram as a company about ongoing criminal activity on the network and that existing moderation was insufficient. According to Durov this is an unlikely excuse since Telegram has an official representative in the EU and a public email address for EU law enforcement.
A few days ago Durov gave his first public response to the charges on his Telegram channel. He argued: "Using laws from the pre-smartphone era to charge a CEO with crimes committed by third parties on the platform he manages is a misguided approach,” and that if this were to become a routine practice of governments it will stifle innovation.
Durov stated:
Building technology is hard enough as it is. No innovator will ever build
new tools if they know they can be personally held responsible for the
potential abuse of those tools.
What do you think? Will Durov's arrest stifle innovation?