Roskomnadzor again blocked several cryptocurrency media

Today, Roskomnadzor once again blocked several cryptocurrency media, including Cointelegraph and Coinspot.

The blocking of information (and not only) sites about blockchain and cryptocurrencies in Russia is already a fairly common occurrence. In most cases, locks are considered illegal and canceled by a higher court. But for this, the resource owners have to turn to the help of lawyers and get into lengthy proceedings. Moreover, foreign sites, as a rule, do not go to Russian courts.

Today, several sites about cryptocurrencies were unexpectedly added to the registry of Roskomnadzor. Their exact number at the time of publication is unknown. However, two popular news sites were blocked – Cointelegraph and Russian-language Coinspot.

Interestingly, the Cointelegraph publication was banned not by court order, but at the request of the Federal Tax Service (FTS) on the basis of order 2-6-20 / 2017-12-22-310-AI of 12.25.2017 – that is, almost two years later of the year.

Coinspot was blocked by a more recent decision of the Central District Court of Volgograd (case 2a-4546/2019 of 08.22.2019) at the suit of the prosecutor’s office of the Danilovsky District of the Volgograd Region. In accordance with the document, the site should only be partially blocked, that is, only one article that tells about the ways to open an online casino on the blockchain. But most providers do not block the page, but the entire site.

In both cases, the reason for the blockage was Article 15.1 149-ФЗ dated July 27, 2006 “On Information, Information Technologies and the Protection of Information”. Based on this law, sites with information whose dissemination is prohibited in the Russian Federation are usually blocked.

Probably, the list of blocked cryptocurrency sites in the near future will be replenished. We will describe the measures that will be taken by the owners of the resources to unlock them, as information becomes available.