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