UPDATE: Russian service decides to block Wikipedia’s page with drug info

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MOSCOW, Aug 24 (PRIME) -- The Russian communications service has sent connection operators an indication to the address of the Wikipedia page with information on drug-containing substances that should be blocked, the authority said Monday in a statement.

“The activities to relocate the mentioned page to another URL address, taken earlier by the administration of the Russian segment of the Internet encyclopedia, did not restrict access to the information which court said is forbidden. The illegal character of information placed in Wikipedia was confirmed by experts and a corresponding decision of the Federal Drug Control Service,” the statement read.

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media has received a decision of a regional court banning distribution of recipes, found on Wikipedia’s Web page. The notification was duly filed to the administration of the resource.

As the Internet resource works on the basis of a HTTPS protocol, which makes restriction of access to certain pages impossible, the whole resource could be blocked.

Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director of non-commercial partnership Wikimedia RU, which represents interests of the Russian-speaking version of Wikipedia, said that the online encyclopedia would not delete the story, as the information had been borrowed from the U.N. Web site.

The communications service’s press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky said that operators will be unable to block the page, and the whole Internet encyclopedia will have to implement the order because of the HTTPS protocol.

“Last week the administration of the Russian-speaking segment of Wikipedia took actions that were not aimed at respecting the law or duly opposing the court’s decision. Instead, the administration did everything to provide users with access to the story about drugs. The principle followed by Wikipedia should be questioned at the resource’s administration,” Ampelonsky said.

Wikimedia Ru’s Director Vladimir Medeiko said that Wikipedia will contest the authority’s decision, which will impact work of the whole resource.

“Wikipedia uses a protected protocol, which does not allow providers and other parties, which exist between the resource’s user and the resource, to determine what pages they read, transfer and receive. Users will have no access to all pages of the resource,” Medeiko said, as cited by the radio station Govorit Moskva.

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