The Russian-language Wikipedia website was shut down on Tuesday 10 July. Now it has a stark black line across its main page in protest at a bill, which may be used to censor the Russian internet.
“Imagine a world without free knowledge,” it said in a statement. Russian parliament will discuss on Wednesday amendments to an information law and they “could lead to the creation of extrajudicial censorship of the whole Russian-language internet”.
This law is promoted by government as a crackdown on obscene content sites, giving advice on suicide and malware.
Wiki considered it as an attempt to build Russian version of “Great China Firewall”.
The bill will be on a second reading in the lower house of parliament on Wednesday. If passed, it will go through several formal votes before being signed into law by President Vladimir Putin.
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UPDATE:Russian Minister Nikolay Nikiforov announced that discussion of this law in parliament will be postponed to the autumn.
