The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, sued the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor

The Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that owns Wikipedia, has filed a lawsuit against the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, Anatoly Razinkin, First Deputy Prosecutor General of Russia, and Roskomnadzor. Data about it placed on the portal of courts of general jurisdiction in Moscow.

The reason for the lawsuit was the decision of the Russian authorities to block information on Wikipedia. As told to the publication “Climb” Executive Director of Wikimedia RU, which provides the work of the Russian-language Wikipedia, Stanislav Kozlovsky, the Wikimedia Foundation is suing representatives of the Russian authorities not because of specific blocking, but is challenging the legality of the very procedure for recognizing information in the Internet encyclopedia as unreliable and illegal.

“There have already been lawsuits against the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor regarding blocking notifications. Apparently, now about the new ones. Last time, the procedure for submitting notifications of entry into the register was violated there. Accordingly, if these notifications turn out to be illegal, all these courts are removed, and there can be no liability for failure to comply with illegal requirements,” Mr. Kozlovsky noted.

Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev in April informedthat in Russia there are no plans to block Wikipedia yet. He noted that now the country is developing the Knowledge portal, which is called an analogue of Wikipedia.

In March 2022, Roskomnadzor threatened to block Wikipedia for an article about the Russian military operation in Ukraine. In the same month, the agency contributed the site manager to the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to the register of companies for “landing” in Russia. In July search engines obliged warn users about violations of the law by Wikipedia.

Alexander Kislov