By
Adedamola Bada
January 28th, 2020
The representatives of Bitcoin websites blacklisted by the Russian government appear in the court with an attempt to change a decision that has restricted domestic access to their domains.
In January 2014, the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications (Roskomnadzor) blacklisted several Bitcoin-related websites. Among them is Bitcoin.org, a popular online community of digital currency users and specialists supported by the Bitcoin Foundation.
Besides, Roskomnadzor has blocked access to the following websites: Bitcoin.it, Bitcoin-related wiki-encyclopedia; Btcsec.com and Coinspot.io, which are online Russian BTC communities; Indacoin.com, Bitcoin exchange; Bitcoinconf.ru (Smile Expo), a company that organizes conferences for 3D Printing, digital currency, Robotics etc.
On April 24th, the representatives of BTCsec.com and Smile Expo attended the first session of Sverdlovsk Regional court with an attempt to change the decision that had restricted domestic access to their websites.
The representatives of BTCsec.com stated that public discussion about the topic of digital currency should be allowed, regardless of the proposal to ban the “distribution of information” on the digital currency technology.
“I’m expecting the decision of blocking BTCsec.com to be cancelled as I deem it illicit, and think the whole trial involved evident flaws. One should remember that cryptocurrencies are not banned in Russia for now, and no information concerning them cannot be considered as information forbidden for distribution within the Russian Federation. I believe they stand to win,” stated Ivan Tikhonov, the founder of BTCsec.
Back in January, Tikhonov told CoinTelegraph:
“We have no plans to close. We believe this ban is unlawful and we will fight it in court.”
“Cryptocurrency in Russia at the moment is not prohibited, and there is no reason to believe the information about them can’t be spread in the territory of the Russian Federation,” Tikhonov has recently told Forklog, a Russian-language Bitcoin news site.
Whereas, the representatives of Smile Expo stated that the purpose of its website is to deliver information about their upcoming conferences in such industries as 3D Printing, digital currency, Robotics, but not to promote Bitcoin. Furthermore, the company explained that the company covers a big range of conferences in various industries and does not specialize exactly in Bitcoin.
decided to carry on with the hearing under general trial jurisdiction on May 15.
The prosecution office attorney was rejected to terminate proceedings in the petition. The Sverdlovsk Regional Court resolved to perform hearings of the case under general trial jurisdiction, that will take place on May 15th.
