Categories: Finance

Ukrainian court banned access to 426 sites, including the Bits.Media forum

Ukrainian court banned access to 426 sites, including the Bits.Media forum

The National Commission of Ukraine for Regulation in the Sphere of Communications and Informatization has sent a notification to telecom operators about the need to close access to 426 sites.

The notification for communication providers is based on the order of the Kiev police № 2436/125 / 47-2021 dated 18.02.2021. It says that it is required to deny access to a large-scale list of resources and “arrest their intellectual property.” The communication operators must carry out the blocking immediately. Blocked sites have the right to appeal to the Kiev Court of Appeal within five days (which have already passed, since the document was published with a delay of 7 days).

The blocking of resources was a consequence of the decision of the judge of the Goloseevsky District Court of Kiev Plakhotnyuk E.G. dated 02/04/2021 on criminal proceedings No. 12020100010005155. The judge ruled to “seize the intellectual property rights” of 426 sites and prohibit access to them on the territory of Ukraine. The case was initiated under article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, part 3 (fraud on an especially large scale with the use of computers), but its details are unknown. The case materials were removed from the public domain for an unknown reason.

The list of sites included the Bits.Media forum, the ForkLog cryptocurrency magazine, the mmgp.ru forum, the Russian media RBC, Banks.ru and Arguments of the Week, the LiveJournal social network and many other popular resources.

The representatives of the forum did not receive any notifications about this trial, they did not participate in the case and only learned about the blocking from the order published today. In connection with this blocking, the Bits.media administration sent an appeal to
Association “Blockchain of Ukraine” to liaise with other companies in the industry to determine the reasons for the blockage.

This is the first large-scale blocking of cryptocurrency sites by the Ukrainian authorities. In Russia, the prosecutor’s office and the courts have mastered this “entertainment” already six years ago. In early 2015, the site and forum Bits.media (at that time btcsec.com) and several other cryptocurrency sites were blocked by the decision of the Nevyansk City Court of the Sverdlovsk Region. As a result of an appeal to higher courts, initiated by the founder of Bits.media, the decision was declared illegal and the blocking was lifted. Several similar cases have arisen over the years. But until now, all decisions of local courts could be challenged in higher instances if the owners of blocked resources filed appeals. For example, Roskomnadzor has repeatedly blocked the monitoring of Bestchange exchangers, but subsequently removed the block.

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