MOSCOW, August 25. /TASS/. At the instruction of Russia’s federal watchdog service in the sphere of mass communications, Internet providers in this country have begun to block access to Wikipedia for the Russian-language users.
However, Moscow users told TASS access was still available both through fixed telephone lines and cellular services.
In the Far East, access in the small hours of Tuesday was still available through fixed-line Internet services.
The watchdog agency, Roskomnadzor said in a press release on Monday it had sent an address of the page in the Russian Wikipedia that contained prohibited information on a narcotic drug.
"The attempts to move the article at a different URL that the executives of the Russian segment of the Internet encyclopedia had made earlier did not limit the users’ access to the content banned by court," a spokesman said.
"The unlawful nature of placing that information in Wikipedia was confirmed by expert analysis and by a resolution of the federal service controlling the circulation and storage of drugs," he said.
Earlier, Roskomnadzor decided to block access to another page in Wikipedia that contained information on the methods of making another narcotic substance.
Roskomnadzor’s decision to block access to a page in Wikipedia will deal a blow to the entire resource, believes Vladimir Medeiko, the director of Wikipedia.ru non-commercial partnership.
Wikipedia uses a secure protocol that does not make it possible for providers or other third parties standing between the users and the resource to identify what pages the user is reading or what data he or she is transmitting or receiving.
"There’ll be no access to all the pages of the resource as a result," Medeiko said in an interview with the Govorit Moskva (Moscow Speaking) public radio.