User:Neuralnewt/sandbox/rucensor

This is something I cleaned up a little bit -didn't write most of it.

Censorship of Wikipedia: Russia

On 18 August 2015, Roskomnadzor notified Russian Wikipedia administrators to remove an article about charas (Чарас), a type of cannabis, by August 21th 2015 or else they would block Wikipedia.^[1] The article was found by a Russian provincial court to contain a detailed description to make a narcotic, deeming it prohibited information.^[2] Roskomnadzor explained that "insofar as Wikipedia has decided to function on the basis of https, which doesn't allow restricting to individual pages on its site, the entire website would be blocked" if they did not comply. ^[3]^[2] In response to the impending block, the director of NP Wikimedia RU Vladimir Medeyko argued that the article had already been adequately rewritten to remove the controversial points and satisfy the order, using scientific articles and UN documents.^[1]^[4], and attempted to preserve the text by transferring it to the article “Hashish”. Wikipedia representatives said if access was restricted, they would file a complaint to the prosecutor’s office against Roskomnadzor and appeal the decision.^[5] Anticipating the ban, the Russian Wikipedia published resources titled “What to do if Wikipedia was blocked”. ^[4]^[6]On August 24, Roskomnadzor instructed Russian internet providers to block Wikipedia.^[5]^[1] By the night of August 25, around 10-20% of Russian users had issues with accessing Wikipedia with access varying between regions and devices used.^[4]^[7] Also on the 25th, the charas article was removed from the registry of banned sites. Roskomnadzor explained that they had "been informed by the Federal Drug Control Service that sufficient edits were made that met the conditions of court order".^[6]