Bits.media lawyers succeeded in waiving claims against the site by the prosecutor's office

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Representing the interests of Bits.media in court, Digital Rights Center experts proved that the media did not violate any laws and the blocking that occurred in the spring at the request of the prosecutor’s office was a mistake. The Saratov prosecutor's office, which filed a demand with the local court, was forced to abandon the claim.

The supervisory authority appealed to the Volzhsky District CourtSaratov on March 31 last year, asking to block the page bits.media/exchanger. This is an information catalog that displays information about bitcoin and altcoin exchange services from public sources. The local prosecutor considered the catalog “information aimed at promoting crimes in the field of legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime.” The court accepted the claim and granted the request as soon as possible. On April 28, Judge Alla Danilenko decided to start blocking. On June 30, the entire Bits.media website ceased to be accessible to users of most Russian providers.

The judge considered the case alone, withoutthe presence of owners of blocked Internet resources - the founder of Bits.media, Ivan Tikhonov, learned about the decision of the Saratov court only after the fact of blocking by Roskomnadzor.

Already on July 5, the blocking was lifted - thanks tothe fact that Bits.media disabled the controversial page. But this did not make the court verdict fairer. Therefore, the Digital Rights Center team officially undertook to represent the interests of Bits.media in court.

DRC lawyers believe that the blocking violated, firstly,substantive law.

The court made a decision, agreeing with the positiona prosecutor who is confident that information about cryptocurrencies cannot be disseminated in Russia, since the law “On the Central Bank” prohibits the “issuance of money surrogates.”

However, the prosecutor did not take into account the circumstances:

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nowhere in Russian legislation is cryptocurrency mentioned as a money surrogate; moreover, there is no definition of a money surrogate itself;

The civil circulation of cryptocurrencies is not prohibited by current legislation, and the norms of administrative and criminal law do not contain any liability for the circulation and exchange of cryptocurrencies.

DRC lawyers are confident that, secondly, there was a violationprocedural law.

The court of first instance deprived the owner of the siteBits.media has the opportunity to defend its rights and present its own position at the hearings. No one notified the owner about the start of the trial, despite the presence of contacts on the site and information about the domain administrator in the WHOIS database.

In the absence of the owner of Bits.media trial was conducted in violation of the principles of adversarialism and equality of rights of the parties to civil proceedings, as provided for by the Code of Administrative Proceedings of the Russian Federation. And this despite the fact that the decision entailed a number of substantive consequences, violating the owner’s rights to freedom of search, receipt and dissemination of information, obliging the execution of the verdict without specific indication of what information about cryptocurrencies violates the law.

Representing the interests of Bits.media lawyers appealed the decision of the judge of the Volzhsky District Court of Saratov in an appeal, where they succeeded in sending the case for a new trial to the same court by the same judge. At the same time, lawyers contacted Saratov prosecutors. Relying on their numerous judicial practices (including the case of the exchanger aggregator Bestchange.ru), the lawyers convinced the employees of the supervisory authority to abandon the claim in a new round.

As a result, on January 24, 2023, Judge AllaDanilenko, who in the spring of 2022 made a decision to restrict access to Bits.media, accepted the acting refusal in a new court hearing. prosecutor of the Volzhsky district of the city of Saratov from an administrative claim regarding claims against the site. DRC lawyer Inna Tverezovskaya, who represented the interests of Bits.media in court, of course, did not object to the dismissal of the claim. As a result, the administrative case was terminated. From this moment, DRC representatives say, all information posted on Bits.media is no longer considered prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.