The Kremlin Bans Wikipedia — Russian Federation Censorship News

But with Russian Wikipedia now getting over a billion page views a month, this could be a very public fight if the block goes ahead.

Also, Wikipedia defines charas as a “hashish form of cannabis which is handmade in India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nepal and Jamaica” – places far from the Russian village.

Russian Federation has placed a complete ban on Wikipedia because of an article about cannabis.

“We’ve been trying to persuade Wikipedia’s Russian leadership to comply with lawful requirements”, Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonskiy said by phone.

In a statement noted by TechCrunch, Wikimedia – the parent company of Wikipedia – says “Censorship of Wikipedia content runs contrary to the Wikimedia vision: a world in which everyone can freely access the sum of all knowledge”. 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.

“Wikipedia uses a protected protocol, which does not allow providers… determine what pages the user is reading”, Medeiko told the Govorit Moskva radio. Wikipedia’s policy of not removing individual articles could mean that Russia’s censors have no alternative but to block the site in its entirety.

Reddit was blocked in Russian Federation a couple of weeks ago, but was reinstated after the site agreed to block access to the post in question (a guide to growing psychedelic mushrooms).

Roskomnadzor, country’s online watchdog, issued a warning over the weekend about the article, and Wikipedia was alerted to the possible banning of the site. Wikipedia was warned last week by the watchdog the website could be blocked if it refused to delete the article.