Wikipedia went to war on procedure
The Wikimedia Foundation filed lawsuits against the Prosecutor General's Office and Roskomnadzor to overturn decisions to block online encyclopedia articles
Original of this material
© CNews.ru, 05.29.2024, Wikipedia went to war against the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor. Three lawsuits filed, litigation could be high-profile
Roskomnadzor and the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) became defendants in an administrative case brought by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is responsible for “Wikipedia”. The plaintiff demands that a number of demands from both departments be declared illegal. Wikipedia is under threat of blocking in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and has previously been subject to “black list” of Roskomnadzor.
Achieve justice through court
The non-profit charitable organization Wikimedia Foundation, responsible for the development of the world Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia, filed a lawsuit against the Prosecutor General's Office of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and Roskomnadzor. The administrative claim was sent to the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow on May 24, 2024 and registered on the same day. Judge Anna Malakhova will consider it. Among the first to pay attention to this were Vedomosti.
According to court materials, the Wikimedia Foundation demands, first of all, that the orders of the Prosecutor General's Office to take measures to limit access to information resources, dated July 5, 2023, be declared illegal.
As for the claims against Roskomnadzor, the Wikimedia Foundation demands that the court declare illegal the notifications sent by the regulator about violations of the procedure for disseminating information.
“Rise”, 05/29/2024, “Wikipedia explained the claim against the Prosecutor General’s Office and the RKN”: The Encyclopedia will appeal the procedure itself, if successful, this will allow the decision to block some articles to be reversed, Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director of Wikimedia RU, which ensures the operation of the Russian-language Wikipedia, told the Podjom publication.
“There have already been lawsuits against the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor regarding blocking notifications. Apparently, now about new ones. Last time, the procedure for submitting notifications about entry into the register was violated. Accordingly, if these notifications turn out to be illegal, all these courts will be dismissed; there can be no liability for failure to comply with illegal requirements.” — Insert K.ru
Two or three
In total, Vedomosti writes, the Tverskoy District Court registered three claims by the Wikimedia Foundation. All of them are directed against First Deputy Prosecutor General Anatoly Razinkin.
The RIA Novosti agency has different information about the number of registered cases. “The Tverskoy District Court of Moscow received two administrative claims from the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to the Prosecutor General's Office, First Deputy Prosecutor General A.V. Razinkin, Roskomnadzor,” the agency quotes the press secretary of the Tverskoy District Court, Maria Osvaldo.
“Conversations on the claims are scheduled for July 10 (2024 – CNews note),” Maria Osvaldo told RIA Novosti.
It's all about the money
The activities of the Wikimedia Foundation in recent years have been associated with many fines, which the foundation has received in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for refusing to remove information deemed objectionable by the Russian authorities. The number of such fines currently amounts to dozens.
For example, as TASS writes, the fund received one of these fines, which became the 13th in a row, in early August 2023. Then the Justice of the Peace at court precinct No. 422 of the Tagansky district of Moscow fined him 3 million rubles.
“Find the Wikimedia Foundation guilty of committing an administrative offense under Part 2 of Art. 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (failure by the owner of a website to delete information or an Internet page if the obligation to delete such information is provided for by Russian legislation),” reads the court decision (quoted by TASS).
In 2023 alone, the total amount of such fines received in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) by the Wikimedia Foundation exceeded 18 million rubles. This includes fines of 3 and 2 million rubles, issued by the court on June 1 and April 27, 2023, respectively.
TASS, 12/22/2023, “The court upheld the decision to fine the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles as legal”: […] The magistrate imposed two fines on the Wikimedia Foundation for 3 million and 2 million rubles. The company was found guilty under Part 2 of Art. 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) (failure by the owner of the website to delete information or an Internet page if the obligation to delete such information or an Internet page is provided for by the legislation of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country)). The reason was the refusal to remove information in articles about SVO events.
In February, the company was also fined 2 million rubles for publishing data on the locations of three military units of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country). In April 2022, the same court fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles for refusing to remove articles about the events in Bucha, the destruction of a hospital and theater in Mariupol, and the production of gunpowder. According to Roskomnadzor, prohibited materials remain undeleted on the Wikipedia portal, including fakes about the progress of a special military operation in Ukraine. In this regard, the Wikimedia Foundation will be marked in search engines as a violator of Russian law. — Insert K.ru
RBC news agency, 02.28.2023, “A court in Moscow fined Wikipedia ₽2 million for articles about the army”: Wikipedia representative Alexander Ganzer said at the meeting that the articles were written based on data from open sources and information from international organizations, including the results of the meeting of the UN General Assembly. A representative of the site said that this information could not harm the interests of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and demanded that the case be closed. — Insert K.ru
In 2024, the flow of fines did not dry up – at the end of March 2024, the fund was again found guilty of failing to remove information prohibited in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Punishment: a fine of 3 million rubles.
TASS, 04/30/2024, Wikipedia still did not remove 187 illegal materials after the demands of the RKN”: The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns the Russian-language Wikipedia, still has not removed 187 illegal materials on this site after demands from Roskomnadzor. This was reported to TASS by the department's press service. — Insert K.ru
Incredibly thin ice
In recent years, the situation around Wikipedia in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) has been constantly heating up. Fines are not the only problem facing both the encyclopedia itself and the organizations that support and develop it.
Thus, at the end of 2023, the Wikimedia.ru community ceased its work in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). It has been supporting the encyclopedia in the country for 15 years.
At the same time, Russian authorities regularly talk about the need to block the original encyclopedia. Among the latter, this idea was expressed by a member of the constitutional committee of the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) Council, Artem Sheikin – in May 2023, he stated that Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) urgently needs an analogue of the “Great Firewall of China”, and that the first resource from which it will protect Russians should be Wikipedia ”
The authorities have experience in blocking Wikipedia in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). In 2015, the online world encyclopedia was blacklisted by Roskomnadzor due to an article about substances banned in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). After some time, the sanctions were lifted.
Also, in recent years, several analogues of Wikipedia have been created in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), including Ruviki (launched in test mode in June 2023), the Runiversalis project and the online version of the Great Russian Encyclopedia.
In the first half of January 2024, as CNews reported, testing of Ruvika was completed, and its full version should have been operational within a few days. However, at the time the material was published, there was a notice on the main page of the encyclopedia notifying that it was still functioning in beta mode.
Original of this material
© “BBC Russian Service”07/20/2022
Russian search engines will label Wikipedia as violating the law due to articles about Ukraine
Roskomnadzor announced “coercive measures” for Wikipedia, which it previously tried to force to remove several articles about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There will be no blocking; the authorities have chosen a mild punishment – they will oblige Russian search engines to inform in search results that the online encyclopedia allegedly violates Russian legislation.
“The decision to apply coercive measures” was made “in connection with the failure of the American non-profit organization Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. to fulfill its obligation to remove illegal information,” it says department statement.
Roskomnadzor warned that the measures it had taken against Wikipedia would remain in effect “until the foreign entity completely eliminates violations of Russian legislation.” […]
Back in early April, Roskomnadzor demanded that Wikipedia remove materials about the war in Ukraine, which the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office considered unreliable. They were talking about five articles – “Battle for Kyiv (2022)”, “War crimes during the Russian invasion of Ukraine”, “Shelling of a hospital in Mariupol”, “Destruction of the Mariupol Theater (2022)” and “Massacre in Bucha”.
Roskomnadzor then stated that Wikipedia had become “a new line of constant information attacks on Russians,” and its authors allegedly “purposefully misinform users of the Internet resource with outright false information.” “The articles published on the resource promote an exclusively anti-Russian interpretation of events,” the officials were indignant.
However, neither then nor now did Roskomnadzor resort to pre-trial blocking of Wikipedia materials, as was done with a huge number of Russian media outlets. Currently, Wikipedia is considered almost the only major site still accessible to Russian readers without a VPN, with information about the war from independent sources.
“There is a risk that Wikipedia will also be blocked, but this will lead to the fact that articles will simply stop being edited from Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism),” Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director of Wikimedia RU, explained to the BBC.
As a result, it will become even more difficult to convey your position to the Russian authorities. “Of course, people have different opinions, but outside of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), people’s opinions are now more or less similar,” Kozlovsky pointed out.
“Wikipedia has been on the register of banned sites since 2012, and it can be blocked every minute for the past 10 years,” he emphasized. – For this, no additional actions are needed, you just need to want it, and Wikipedia will be blocked completely according to the law. “Wikipedia has been living in such conditions for the last 10 years.”
On April 26, a Russian court fined the Wikimedia Foundation totaling 5 million rubles for refusing to remove articles about war-ravaged Mariupol, other events in Ukraine related to the Russian invasion, and the method of making gunpowder.
At present, it is impossible to find out which authors create articles about the Russian invasion: Wikipedia administrators have hidden their names, wrote “Cold”. They made this decision after Belarusian authorities in March arrested one of the most famous authors of Russian-language Wikipedia, Mark Bernstein, who edited articles about the war in Ukraine.
TASS, 03.03.2024, “The State Duma stated that Wikipedia could be blocked under the law banning the popularization of VPNs”: Wikipedia may be blocked in the Russian Federation (*aggressor country) according to the requirements of the law prohibiting advertising or popularization of means of bypassing blocking, which include VPN services. This opinion was expressed by Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications.
“Wikipedia may be blocked in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) under a new law banning the popularization of VPNs,” Gorelkin wrote in his Telegram channel. Thus, he noted, the Telegram channel of the domestic analogue of Wikipedia, Runiversalis, reports the existence of “an entire wiki article , which not only describes ways to bypass blocking, but also strongly recommends that users use them, which fully complies with the criteria recently announced by Roskomnadzor.”
“In addition, the regulator has a number of other claims, many of which have already been ruled in court. There are legal grounds for blocking Wikipedia; all that remains is to ensure that this does not cause severe discomfort among users,” Gorelkin added. — Insert K.ru