[Wikimedia-l] Russian Wikipedia in trouble /yet/ again

[Tomasz W. Kozlowski]

Hi there,
two months after the "smoking cannabis" controversy, the Russian 
Wikipedia is in trouble again, this time over an anti-piracy legislation 
that will come into force on August 1 and which might result in 
Wikipedia as a whole -- not just a few articles -- being blacklisted in 
the country.

The Russian parliament introduced anti-drug and anti-child pornography 
legislation last year, and it's already successfully used to censor 
encyclopaedic articles, so I guess it's time for more radical steps now; 
the new law might lead to banning websites that just /link/ to sites 
which hold content copyrighted by others.

RIA Novosti has more information on the subject: 
<http://en.ria.ru/russia/20130709/182150416/Russian-Wikipedia-Faces-Ban-Due-to-Anti-Piracy-Law--Director.html>

I'm CC-ing the advocacy advisors mailing list because this lies within 
their area of expertise; when responding to this e-mail, please make 
sure to include both lists.

	-- Tomasz