Wikipedia is blacklisted in Russia

http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/24/russian-wikipedia-editors-weighing-options-after-site-is-blacklisted-in-russia/

by marinintim • 11 years ago

62 48 11 years ago

marinintim• 11 years ago

Approx. 30% of Russian internet providers will block Wikipedia.org entirely, because Wikipedia.org use HTTPS (and Deep Package Inspection is too damn costly).

Runet, as usual, is full of tragedy jokes: [lang=ru] https://tjournal.ru/p/rkn-wikipedia-block-bloggers

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

Deep Packet Inspection won't help you versus HTTPS (unless you're CIA and have crypto backdoors).

socceroos• 11 years ago

Or the private keys to a tonne of Certs from the cert authorities.

The massive elephant in the room is the cert authorities..

drdaeman4• 11 years ago

The use of "DPI" is frequently has a buzzword-like nature, which could mean literally anything from real DPI to transparent and semi-transparent HTTP proxies and sometimes even DNS spoofing techniques.

The bad thing is that some ISPs MITM (with obviously invalid self-signed certificate, not even matching CN/DN of the domain being proxied) instead of completely dropping all tcp/443 traffic.

Not that it's bad intent to try to provide access to the non-blacklisted pages, but it's an absolutely harmful practice of teaching users to click the knobs "aw, ignore those errors, I want to read the site".

osipov8• 11 years ago

This has already happened with github, reddit, and several other lesser known sites. In all those cases access was restored very quickly, within hours/days, as soon as site admins complied with the Russian law. What's different this time?

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

Wikipedia is non-profit, chance it's not going to cave.

r7212• 11 years ago

Buzzfeed has Wikimedia Foundation's full statement (in the end of the article):

http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/russia-says-its-banning-wi...

dataker• 11 years ago

I do find this to be disgusting, but I'd like to point out Wikipedia articles have become quite biased in the past years.

If content was based on purely factual information and opinions were contrasted/highlighted, Russia would have a much harder time finding a suitable argument.

drdaeman4• 11 years ago

Doesn't matter. Even if Wikipedia would be full of outright lies it still won't justify censorship and blocking. But considering your argument, now it at least makes sense why the Absurdopedia was blocked among the first sites, hah. /s

osipov8• 11 years ago

it still won't justify censorship and blocking

do you deny countries the legal right to set their own limitations on free speech?

frozenport• 11 years ago

>Russia would have a much harder time finding a suitable argument

Arguments are for systems where there are dissenting voices. In blocking Wikipedia, they silence those voices. They are choosing between displaying information critical of their government and not displaying that information.

They could block it for having information about drugs (like Reddit) but that is not at all what this discussion is about.

osipov8• 11 years ago

Wikipedia articles have become quite biased in the past years.

don't know why OP is getting downvoted because this reflects my observation as well

i trace the systemic bias in wikipedia to an equivalent bias in the English language media and wikipedia's policy of reliable sources. the latter is a doubly edged sword that keeps out the crackpots but also ignores reasoned dissenting voices that come from outside the corporate media circle.

schoen6• 11 years ago

Maybe people were offended that someone would criticize Wikipedia in this way in the context of news about censorship against it, the idea being that it's rude to bring up problems with a site's content just as the site is about to be censored.

Personally I think problems of bias on Wikipedia are an interesting issue that can be hard to deal with, because many Wikipedians have assumed that the elaborately-worked out policies about point of view, reliable sources, and citations have already addressed this. But maybe in many contexts these policies don't work well or don't achieve their goals well (and there are lots of ways that could be so, some of which are already identified within the Wikipedia community but not necessarily solved).

I assume the downvotes have to do with the implication that it's legitimate to block Internet content that is biased, rather than with the assertion that Wikipedia content is sometimes or increasingly biased.

sologoub• 11 years ago

Techcrunch missed a very interesting point about Roscomnadzors tactic here - they actually bothered to get a court order! [1] This is not something they normally do or, I think, are even required under the laws they tend to us in such cases.

The sad part is that the way that legal regime works, they are following the letter of the law and the general populous is not likely to object, since the article covers content related to a controlled substance, and since Soviet times, controlled substances carry heavy stigma, especially among older generations.

[1] http://m.lenta.ru/news/2015/08/24/wiki/ (sorry in Russian)

osipov8• 11 years ago

This is typical of the coverage we got with blocking of github and reddit. Very much a knee-jerk reaction with little understanding of the Russian laws and procedures. Of course, it is a mistake to expect otherwise. The problem is that an average reader will come away with an impression: "those backwards Russians are censoring the internet again!"

hyperpape• 11 years ago

I hope you realize we don't care whose laws they are--we regard that censorship as illegitimate. There's nationalism and chauvinism aplenty, but many of those you'll find criticizing Russia on this point frequently condemn our own governments when they veer into censorship.

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

Nobody blames Roscomnadzor too much - not much more than sorry fellows who dug the graves for people killed in concentration camps.

The current illegitimate parliament is to blame. Being appointed to their chairs by Putin's grey cardinals instead of popular vote, they did every thing to please the dictator. Probably won't get any punishment for that other than karmic rebirth into a frog in their next life.

osipov8• 11 years ago

@guard-of-terra please take your "self-hating Russian" schtick elsewhere. your comments don't belong on hacker news.

dang2• 11 years ago

Your many comments in this thread are provocative to the point of trolling and then some. Please stop.

Asbostos2• 11 years ago

Drug making instructions are a gray area. Most countries have laws restricting what you're allowed to publish - and they're all a bit arbitrary and different. It sounds like Wikipedia is trying to push American values onto everyone else.

Imagine if Wikipedia was based in a country that didn't respect copyright. Would people in America be upset that it was getting banned for hosting pirated content?

cdash2• 11 years ago

People on this site certainly would not be that upset, that is for sure.

guard-of-terra5• 11 years ago

I'll take American values over applying random norms to encyclopedia contents.

Russian language speakers are not limited to Russia, there's tens of millions speakers in other countries. Wikipedia can't cave to demands from specific country. That is a road that will quickly lead to removal and censorship of any information not in line with what state TV in that country say, "or else".

cdash2• 11 years ago

Except all they have to do is block a single page from being viewed by people accessing the site with a certain ip range in order to comply.

viraptor2• 11 years ago

American values? While I would agree in many cases of disputes about wikipedia content, this is not one of them. How is free and unrestricted access to information an American value?

osipov8• 11 years ago

How is free and unrestricted access to information an American value?

I think the OP meant that American laws (based on American values) govern the content that's legal on Wikipedia. For example, there is no content on the site showing child pornography based on the US legal definition. Note that US legal definition doesn't fit with the definitions from other countries.

schoen6• 11 years ago

The legal standards for suppression of information and the categories of information that can potentially trigger those standards are stricter and narrower in most respects in the U.S. than in most other jurisdictions. Also, many segments of society often express pride in the breadth and depth of U.S. legal protections for free expression, and argue that it's something that makes the U.S. or the U.S. legal system great.

Foreign law students sometimes find it hard to believe that some of the rules are so protective of speech (source: three different U.S. law professors have told me this).

A few examples:

* All fictional depictions of violence are protected.

* There are no restrictions on blasphemy or insults to religious doctrines, religious beliefs, religious believers or communities, or religious believers' feelings.

* Advocacy and glorification of any kind of illegal action (including war crimes and genocide) are fully protected if they aren't reasonably likely to lead to a specific imminent lawless action.

* Advocacy against the state or its powers is mostly completely protected for citizens, as is teaching that the prevailing political or economic system is inherently wrong. Urging resistance to or evasion of military conscription is mostly understood as protected now (unlike during World War I). Same thing with taxation, if you're not teaching people how to do it with the intention that they act on your advice.

* Detailed information about how to commit crimes is usually protected if the person publishing it didn't have a sufficiently specific intention to help people actually commit them in practice and didn't have some other responsibility to keep the published information secret.

* Insulting present or past state leaders or the virtue or legitimacy of the state or any political party is fully protected.

* It's protected to advocate regional or ethnic secession or territorial separatism (though not to conspire to effectuate it by force). It's protected to display flags or emblems of militant groups, even those that the U.S. is trying to oppose or suppress or is engaged in armed conflict with. It's protected to show disrespect to national symbols or emblems of the United States.

* Contrary to increasingly common popular belief, there are no restrictions on "hate speech" or group libel (for example saying that a particular group in society is bad, using slurs against a group, saying that some negative stereotype is true or that members of some group commonly or always have a negative characteristic, or wishing for or justifying ill treatment of a group).

* Most sexualized depictions of adults (and most sexualized depictions of fictional children) are now legally protected in practice, although there can theoretically be restrictions in various circumstances that seem to be becoming increasingly rare and exceptional.

* It's hard to punish people for downstream republication of leaked or misappropriated information.

* It's hard to punish people for repeating truthful negative information about other people, especially if they weren't originally involved in obtaining that information.

I'm sure there are other examples!

EiZei• 11 years ago

It looks like the Russian government find HN notable enough to unleash it's army of little internet commentators here.

ttflee• 11 years ago

FYI, Wikipedia for Chinese languages has been inaccessible for months in China.

r7212• 11 years ago

It has been removed now: https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i/commit/482f8014b15cb0ef1b... (3 hours ago)

-ru.wikipedia.org;https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%E0%F0%E0%F1;

So it was in the register for 8 hours.

Wikipedia is blacklisted in Russia

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