Russian Wikipedia shuts down in protest at internet Bill

The Russian-language Wikipedia website shut down for a day yesterday and symbolically blacked out its logo in protest at a bill that would allow the state to block access to blacklisted websites. “Imagine a world without free knowledge,” it said in a...

The Russian-language Wikipedia website shut down for a day yesterday and symbolically blacked out its logo in protest at a bill that would allow the state to block access to blacklisted websites.

Imagine a world without free knowledge

“Imagine a world without free knowledge,” it said in a statement on its otherwise white main page, saying amendments to be discussed in parliament tomorrow “could lead to the creation of extrajudicial censorship of the whole Russian-language internet”.

The amendments to an existing information law are being promoted as a crackdown on child pornography in particular, but the Ru.Wikipedia.org site warned that they could “prompt the creation of a Russian version of the Great Firewall of China”.

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