A Wikipedia article about the narcotic substance charas that violated Russian laws has been edited and has been removed from the unified register of banned information, Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor said on its website.
“The resolution issued by the Chernoyarsk court in the Astrakhan region with regard to the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has been implemented. The information recognized by the court as banned has been edited. The reference mentioned in this court ruling has been excluded from the unified register of banned information,” it said.
Roskomnadzor reiterated that it was speaking about a Wikipedia article that contained information about the narcotic substance charas. Experts of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service have concluded that the new version of this article does not violate any laws.
Wikipedia.ru executive director Stanislav Kozlovsky also confirmed that Roskomnadzor had removed this Wikipedia article containing information about drugs from the register of banned websites.
Kozlovsky also published the notification confirming the removal of this article by Roskomnadzor from the register of banned information on the Wikipedia.ru website.
It means that Wikipedia’s Russian-language website is presently in open access.
Last week, Roskomnadzor sent the administration of Wikipedia an order to remove an article with information about how to prepare narcotics from its website or have the resource blocked throughout Russia.
Since the Wikipedia administration has decided to use the secure HTTPS protocol, which does not allow restricting access to individual pages, the whole website could have been blocked.
