The owner of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, filed two lawsuits against the Prosecutor General’s Office, First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin and Roskomnadzor, RBC was told in the press service of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow.
The Wikimedia Foundation asks the court to invalidate Roskomnadzor’s notification of a violation of the procedure for distributing information on Wikipedia and the requirement of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation to take measures to restrict access to this information. <...> Conversations on these cases are scheduled for 07/10/2023, ”the message says.
RBC sent a request to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor.
As Stanislav Kozlovsky, the executive director of Wikimedia RU, which provides the work of the Russian-language Wikipedia, told the Rise publication, the blocking procedure itself will be appealed, which, if recognized as illegal, will make it possible to cancel the decision to block some articles.
“There have already been lawsuits against the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor regarding blocking notifications. Apparently, now about the new ones. Last time, the procedure for submitting notifications of entry into the register was violated there. Accordingly, if these notifications turn out to be illegal, all these courts are removed, and there can be no liability for failure to comply with illegal requirements,” Kozlovsky said.
Over the past two years, the owner of Wikipedia has been fined more than once for posting materials. Last year, the fund received fines of 2 million and 3 million rubles. for not deleting articles with fakes about the military operation in Ukraine. On February 28 this year, the Wikimedia Foundation was fined 2 million rubles. for not removing articles about some Russian military units with information about their deployment, as well as materials about military operations near Kharkov, Lisichansk and Mariupol.