Several hours after banning Wikipedia on Monday for failing to bring down its article that describes how marijuana is prepared, the Russian communications watchdog changed its early directives and decided to lift the ban early Tuesday.
Roskomnadzor, the FCC in Russia, ordered all ISPs in the country to block the page containing the illegal drug recipe. Russian laws prohibit Internet-based sharing of any drug-related information that are instructional in nature. The Russian watchdog further threatened about blacklisting Wikipedia should it fail to delete the controversial article.
"Roskomnadzor has ordered providers to block a page on the Russian Wikipedia website, which contains information on narcotics," said the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications in a statement.
The banned article refers specifically to charas which is cannabis in hashish form that is handmade in countries such as India, Nepal, Pakistan, Lebanon and Jamaica. However, a voluntary group, believed to control the Russian operations of Wikipedia, said that the site refuses to delete the article because it has information that is sourced from a U.N. article and that it is purely academic in nature. In an effort to avoid the ban, the site decided instead to edit the article and move it using a different URL.
"The Russian Wikipedia community has held active discussions regarding the notice and article. Editors have made significant changes to the article, adding further information and citations to reliable sources, bringing it in line with Wikipedia's standards for neutrality and reliability. The community has also added a notification banner to Russian Wikipedia, pointing out to users that the site may be blocked," said Wikimedia in a statement.
On Monday evening, the webpage was seen with a black banner posted on the top part which informs users that the site could be blocked soon.
In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country will start its gradual move of closing down Internet sites which are deemed to promote violence and extremism. Both are banned from being distributed as stated in the Russian Constitution. A law was then adopted in the same year which stated that each website and webpage that has a daily average visitor number of 3,000 should be registered with Roskomnadzor.
Russian Wikipedia has more than a billion page views a month and features more than a million articles.
Vladimir Medeyko, director of the voluntary group Wikimedia.ru, said that Wikipedia would file an appeal in order to contest the decision made by Roskomnadzor.
"If the state [Russia] blocks Wikipedia, it will only make things worse for itself," said Medeyko.
True enough, the short-lived ban caused quite a storm among online users in Russia.
