Russian media watchdog lifts blocking of cryptocurrency news page after allegations of money laundering
Roskomnadzor, the public agency that oversees Russia’s mass media, has once again given users access to a prominent Russian cryptocurrency news site.
Bits.media, a Russian crypto-related news site, was only recently blocked as a consequence of the proceedings in a district court where the company’s representatives were not even required to appear.
The outlet managed to convince Russia’s Federal Service for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media to remove it from its blacklist, making it available again in the territory of the Russian Federation on July 5, although the site’s editors announced that they would continue to fight it. ‘unfair’ judgment.
Roskomnadzor, as the agency is known, restricted access to the Bits.media website last week to promote “money laundering” after adding an indefinite number of pages to a list of sites distributing content deemed illegal in the Russian Federation.
The decision to implement the measure was based on a verdict handed down by the Volzhsky District Court in the city of Saratov in a case first brought by the local prosecutor’s office in late March.
After assessing the circumstances of the situation without the holders of the media organization being present, the court decided to accept the prosecution’s proposal less than a month later.
The URLs that caused the issues, some of which belonged to other sites, were hidden from public view. Bits.media discovered that one of them is the address of its cryptocurrency exchange aggregator, and it published this information.
It was also necessary to remove that page before the media sensor in Russia would allow Russian ISPs to restore access to the site. The members of the team have come to the conclusion that the four more compounds specified in the judgment of the provincial court are the addresses of other aggregators or crypto exchangers.
Despite this, the administration of the crypto-media plans to put an end to the problem since it is established that the address was banned in violation of the law. Bits.media was established by Ivan Tikhonov, who was quoted as saying: “We consider the court’s decision illegal and will seek its annulment.”
Tikhonov revealed the fact that the editors had made the decision to deactivate the aggregator page in order to keep the rest of the page up during the proceedings.
The law firm is taking up the case to reverse the verdict
Bits.media will enlist the help of the Digital Rights Center, a Russian law firm specializing in providing legal advice to Internet users and companies, in the forthcoming attempts to overturn the ruling handed down by the Saratov court. In 2016, the company’s legal team had the blocking of the aggregator on Bestchange.ru lifted.
Since the circulation of cryptocurrencies was not and still is not prohibited under Russia’s applicable laws, the company’s legal experts could claim that judicial officials had violated the law, which allowed them to prove that the company had committed infringements.
Other successful cases have been handled by the Digital Rights Coalition, such as the unblocking of the websites of the Bitcoininfo.ru portal and Binance.
Finally, Bits.media is not the only Russian-language cryptocurrency information site that has been the focus of attack in recent times.
In early April, Roskomnadzor restricted access to the Forklog.com website, which is the most popular source of cryptocurrency-related news updates in the Russian-speaking space. The same thing happened here; there was neither a warning nor an explanation before it took place.
