Russian service to meet with Wikipedia Thu to avoid blocking

MOSCOW, Nov 26 (PRIME) -- The Russian communications service will meet on Thursday with editors of Wikipedia to discuss approaches to correct four articles, containing forbidden information on drugs, and avoid blocking, the authority said.

“We have been observing changes on pages with banned information for over a week. Now most of the articles on drugs have been edited,” the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media said in the VKontakte social network.

Blocking of any article of Wikipedia will lead to the resource’s full closure, because it uses the HTTPS protocol.

The corrected articles were sent to the Federal Drug Control Service for additional expertise to understand whether the new versions comply with the requirements.

The communications service said Monday that it would add the four articles of Wikipedia to the register of forbidden information. The authority earlier received a decision of the drug control watchdog that found forbidden information in five Wikipedia articles: on cocaine, methylamphetamine, amphetamines, JWH-018 and MDMA. They contained information on the order of preparation and use of drugs.

One of the articles, on JWH-018, would not be added to the register as the banned information was deleted.

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