Remove The Cannabis Entry Or You’ll Be Banned — Russian Federation To Wikipedia

In an effort to resolve the impasse Russian Wikipedia editors are investigating ways of including additional information and citations to the offending article which meets the concerns of Roskomnadzor whilst maintaining Wikipedia’s commitment to free access to knowledge.

Roskomnadzor, the body responsible for oversight and regulation of the internet in Russia, has banned Russian-language Wikipedia over an article on charas, a type of hashish. According to Roscomnadzor’s strict judgement, the page constitutes instructions on how to make the drug, which makes it illegal under Russian laws that prohibit sharing instructional drug-related information over the internet.

Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s media watchdog agency, sent a letter to Wikipedia’s administrators in response to a court ruling on the charas post in June.

It seems like Wikipedia is standing by its decision to not remove the entry that caused all this havoc.

A voluntary group that controls Wikipedia’s operations in Russian Federation said the website would not delete the article because the information was taken from a United Nations article, and all the information was academic.

Wikipedia hasn’t yet decided on what actions to take, Kozlovskiy said.

And since a single page can’t be blocked, the entire Russian language Wikipedia website is dark. Well, the site uses the protected HTTPS protocol, so most Russian ISPs lack the technology to block individual pages, making it all or nothing.

Reddit’s ban came as a result of a post from 2013 about the best way to grow a certain form of psychedelic mushrooms. Of course, as we have seen in China, just because a website is blocked, it does not mean that it is completely inaccessible – mirrors for the Russian version of Wikipedia will nearly certainly spring up, and proxies will also grant access.