Report: Proxy service owner files 1st suit against com watchdog

MOSCOW, Jun 15 (PRIME) -- Vladislav Zdolnikov, an owner of proxy service TgVPN, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the Russian communications service asking the Moscow Arbitration Court to find the authority’s blocking of the IP addresses used by the proxy service illegal, business daily Vedomosti reported on Friday.

Zdolnikov created the free proxy service for popular messenger Telegram, which is blocked in the country, a year ago, but that year Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov formally fulfilled requirements of the communications watchdog and gave it the information to be included into the register of organizers of information distribution.

The proxy service was idle for the whole year, but when Telegram was blocked on April 16, the company received a notice on muting both servers with virtual private networks (VPN) and proxy servers, Zdolnikov told Vedomosti.

The plaintiff asks the court to admit that the communications service had illegally blocked TgVPN’s domain names and network addresses and exclude them from the register of banned resources.

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