14 DAY TRIAL // Russian authorities banned the entire Wikipedia website yesterday because of one single page containing information about a cannabis-derived product.
The ban was lifted this morning, but not after Russian Wikipedia users were greeted by a blank page. In instances where the site still worked, Wikipedia admins added a banner at the top of the page instructing users on how to get around the state-ordered ban.
The Wikipedia page that sparked the whole outrage is one that details charas, a hashish form of cannabis produced in various countries around the world out of the plant's resin.
A court in a small town in southern Russia reached the conclusion that this page contained harmful information about drugs, and ordered Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) to have it blocked on the grounds of the law “On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development.”
Since Wikipedia uses HTTPS by default for all its connections, most Russian ISPs weren't able to block that specific page alone and were forced to ban the entire site to avoid sanctions from Russia's online communications watchdog.
Russia previously banned Reddit and the Wayback Machine
This is not the first time a Russian Internet ban is foiled by HTTPS, as back in July, Roskomnadzor ordered Internet service providers to block the Wayback Machine (or Internet Archive) because of an archived page called “Solitary Jihad in Russia.”
Soon after that, Russian authorities also banned Reddit in the same manner, just because of a single thread about growing hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Since Reddit switched to HTTPS back in June, the site was blocked in its entirety. Reddit caved in a few days later and took it in its hands to filter Russian traffic from ever reaching that page.
