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Russia’s mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has restored access to a major Russian cryptocurrency news portal. Bits.media was recently blocked as a result of a lawsuit in a regional court that representatives were not even summoned to attend.
Bits.media, the source of crypto-related news with the second largest audience in the Russian-speaking area, has managed to win the cancellation of the blacklist of Russia’s federal service for the supervision of communications, information technology and mass media.
Roskomnadzor, as the agency is also called, blocked access to the Bits.media website last week, after adding an unspecified number of pages to a register of Internet sources that disseminate information that is considered banned in Russia.
The measure was imposed based on a ruling by the Volzhsky District Court in the city of Saratov in a lawsuit initiated by the local prosecution in late March. The judge granted the prosecution’s request less than a month later, after assessing the case in the absence of the media outlet’s owners.
The problematic URLs, some of which belong to other sites, were not published. Bits.media determined that one of them is the address of its cryptocurrency exchange aggregator. It had to take down that page, after which the media sensor allowed Russian ISPs to restore access to the site. The team believes that the other four links mentioned in the provincial court’s decision are the addresses of other aggregators or cryptocurrency exchangers.
However, the management of the crypto-media intends to close the case, as it insists that the address was blocked in violation of the law. “We consider the court’s decision illegal and will demand its annulment,” said Ivan Tikhonov, founder of Bits.media. He pointed out that the editors have decided to deactivate the aggregator page so that the rest of the page remains online during the proceedings.
In the forthcoming work to overturn the Saratov court ruling, Bits.media will be supported by the Digital Rights Center, a Russian law firm specializing in providing legal assistance to Internet users and businesses. Two years ago, the lawyers managed to remove the block of the Bestchange.ru aggregator.
The company’s legal experts were able to prove that the judicial authorities had committed violations since the circulation of cryptocurrencies was not, and is not yet, prohibited by Russia’s applicable law. The DRC has other successful cases in its portfolio, including the unblocking of the websites of the Bitcoininfo.ru portal and Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.
Bits.media is not the only Russian-language source of crypto-related information that has been targeted recently. In early April, Roskomnadzor restricted access to Forklog.com, the leading provider of cryptocurrency news updates in the Russian-speaking area. Just like with Bits.media, this happened without any warning or explanation.
Forklog’s blacklist came just days after online editors condemned Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, Bits.media notes in its report. Forklog remains blocked in Russia until now, as according to Roskomnadzor it presents information that distribution is prohibited in Russia.
What are your thoughts on blocking Bits.media, Forklog and other krypton sites in Russia? Tell us in the comments section below.
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