Roskomnadzor unblocked Bits.media: the editorial office seeks to cancel the court decision

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The Bits.media website has been available again in the Russian Federation since Tuesday, July 5th. However, the editors intend to continue the fight against the unfair court verdict.

The editors of the second largest Russian-language cryptomedia audience, Bits.media, managed to get the decision of Roskomnadzor (RKN) to be cancelled.
black list of prohibited sites.Editorial specialists found out that in the lines of the verdict of the Volzhsky District Court of the city of Saratov, closed from the public, the URL of the exchanger aggregator is listed at bits.media/exchanger. The page had to be temporarily disabled, after which RKN allowed the hoster to restore access for Russian providers to the media site.

The editors believe that four more URLs encrypted in the same text of the decision of the provincial court are addresses of other aggregators or crypto exchangers.

The management of Bits.media intends to bring the trial to the end, as it believes that the address of the cryptomedia website page was illegally banned.

“We consider the court’s decision illegaland we will seek its abolition,” says the creator of Bits.media, Ivan Tikhonov. “We have decided to disable the page that was the subject of the proceedings so that the site remains accessible during the trials.”

Seek the overturning of the Bits court decision.media will be assisted by lawyers from the Digital Rights Center. These are specialists in the activities of providers, the work of online media, the circulation of cryptocurrencies and data protection.

They were the ones who successfully two years agoachieved the unblocking of the Bestchange exchanger aggregator and proved during the proceedings that the prosecutor's office and the court violated substantive and procedural law - since the civil circulation of cryptocurrencies in the Russian Federation is not prohibited, and the parties to the case should be able to exercise the rights guaranteed by the Code of Administrative Proceedings. The lawyers of the Center for the Protection of Digital Rights also have other successful cases, for example, related to 
blocking the news portal Bitcoininfo.ru and 
crypto exchange Binance.

Bye Bits.media remained on the blacklist, in the Russian Federation, in fact, access to two of the largest Russian-language cryptomedia on the planet was limited—including Forklog.com. Roskomnadzor restricted access to the Forklog magazine in the beginning of April—the same as in the case of Bits.media, without warning and without explaining the reason. The blacklisting occurred a few days after the magazine’s editors condemned the military special operation in Ukraine. Forklog remains blocked to this day because, according to RKN, it contains information prohibited for dissemination on Russian territory.