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Roskomnadzor blocked Bits.media in Russia

On Thursday, June 30, the Bits. media has ceased to be available to users of most major Russian providers. The editors found out that the reason was the blocking of Roskomnadzor. The agency has entered unknown pages/site page in the register of prohibited resources. Editing Bits. media considers the blocking illegal and will challenge the decision.

The reason for the blocking is the decision of the Volzhsky District Court of the city of Saratov. The prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit on March 31, and in record time, on April 24, the lawsuit was satisfied. On the district court website
saysthat judge Alla Danilenko considered the case alone, without the presence of the owners of blocked Internet resources.

According to the published decision, the court banned some five unnamed URLs in the document. The official wording of the verdict: five Internet addresses contain “information aimed at promoting crimes in the field of legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime.”

Only Bits pages are meant. media is unknown. What was the reason for the suit of the prosecutor’s office is unknown. The plaintiff and the court did not consider it necessary to contact the editorial office at any of the e-mail addresses published on the website, emphasizes the founder of Bits. media Ivan Tikhonov:

“We are an interested party in the case, but no one notified us of the proceedings. We were not given any opportunity to remove the materials about which the Saratov prosecutor’s office had questions. We strongly disagree with the verdict.”

The editors will definitely challenge the decision of the court of first instance. Moreover, exactly the same incident has already ended once with the victory of Bits. media.

In January 2015, an attempt was made to block our website, referring to the decision of the Nevyansk City Court of the Sverdov Region. The local prosecutor’s office, as in the case of Saratov, appealed to the judge with a claim for “protection of an indefinite circle of persons.” Then seven Internet resources were immediately blocked.

The editors challenged the blocking in the court of second instance, demanding that the decision of the Nevyansk City Court be cancelled. And four months later she successfully won the case. Shortly thereafter, Roskomnadzor unblocked the site.

Now the Bits website and forum. media continue to work as before, they are available all over the world, including in Russia – via VPN or using browser plugins. Social networks, our Telegram channel and YouTube channel are still functioning.

The editors will keep you informed of the proceedings.

Source: Bits

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