Russia has just banned Wikipedia over an article about marijuana. Roscomnadzor, the arm of the Russian government tasked with policing media and the internet, has ordered Russian internet service providers to block the site.

The ban is due to a specific article about charas, a form of hashish that is handmade in India. According to Roscomnadzor's strict judgement, the page constitutes instructions on how to make the drug, which makes it illegal under Russian laws that prohibit sharing instructional drug-related information over the internet. Wikimedia.ru has declined to avoid the ban by removing the post.

Earlier this month, Russia briefly blocked the entirety of Reddit over a post about hallucinogenic mushrooms after Reddit refused to remove the post and HTTPS, which encrypts traffic between websites and users, prevented internet service providers from blocking only the specific page. Reddit and the Russian government eventually came to an agreement about blocking the offending thread.

Roscomnadzor has been threatening the ban of Wikipedia since last week, saying the following in a statement:

In the event that [Wikipedia] refuses to comply with the court's ruling, Roskomnadzor will block the webpage on Russian territory using the registry of illegal information. In this case, insofar as Wikipedia has decided to function on the basis of https, which doesn't allow restricting access to individual pages on its site, the entire website would be blocked.

Now it appears that time has come, unless some sort of agreement is reached. Wikimedia.ru told Sputnik News that intends to appeal the ban. Until then, Russians will be stuck using Tor or VPNs to access the site. The upside is that with those tools at their disposal, they can probably find way better information on how to make and use drugs than anything that's on Wikipedia.

Source: The Daily Dot, Sputnik News

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