Unblocking a site by a lawyer - How do I unblock a website in Russia?

In this article, you will learn about government blocking and how to solve this problem.

In August 2022, the largest website about cryptocurrencies, mining and blockchain - bytwork.com was blocked by the Roskomnadzor (RKN), the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media.

Legal:

The basis for inclusion in the register of the information specified in paragraph 2 of this article is, among other things, a court decision that has entered into force on recognizing information disseminated via the Internet as information whose distribution is prohibited in the Russian Federation (paragraph 2 Part 5, Article 15.1 of Federal Law No. 149-FZ).¹

In plain language, the basis for blocking was information about Bitcoin and its acquisition.

The essence of the blocking: in 2020, the Onega City Court ruled to block the site bytwork.com without notifying the site administrators about the court, although there was such a possibility (the mail was indicated in the site footer).

For 2 years (from 2020 to 2022), the matter went to Roskomnadzor, and only in August 2022 the department blocked the site.

 

Received a notification from representatives of the department:

The government notice proposes to remove material allegedly infringing the law. Otherwise, it will be included in the list of prohibited information.

What to do after blocking?

The Bytwork team initially tried to handle the whole process on their own. They removed the page because of which there was a court and notified representatives of the department about it.

However, Roskomnadzor considered that the entire domain is subject to blocking. And despite the fact that the administrators of the Bytwork site removed the page against which the judgment was issued, RKN left the entire domain blocked.

Next, Bytwork turned to lawyers. Not all lawyers understand how to conduct such cases, moreover, many did not understand what blocking from the RKN is and who blocks access to sites in Russia?

The Bytwork team realized that it was necessary to look for lawyers specializing in such cases!

According to numerous reviews and advice from administrators and owners of other sites-colleagues, the company DRC.law was found.

DRC.law is a large company of IT lawyers. They solve all legal issues for users, website owners, IT and Telecom businesses!

Contacting DRC.law, Bytwork immediately outlined the issue. The lawyers instantly, thanks to their vast experience in handling such cases, described a possible solution to the blocking problem, drew up an action plan and honestly set the deadlines (let’s say right away that DRC.law did everything quickly and efficiently, all the deadlines depended only on the Court, post offices and other related to this).

After listening to the action plan, the Bytwork team decided to cooperate with DRC.law.

Solution

The DRC.law team immediately proceeded to create an appeal based on the fact that Bytwork was not notified of the trial and the procedural deadlines were violated.

It should be noted right away that DRC.law gives you a choice of 2 options for working with them:²

1. You personally go to court with lawyers;
2. You draw up a power of attorney for the company (it is only for the court), and the lawyer himself goes to court on your behalf. Bytwork chose option 2!

Since the court was very far away, it was easier and more profitable to issue a power of attorney.

After the appeal was drawn up, it was sent to court (everything was done very quickly). The appeal was sent in August 2022! And the answer from the Onega City Court came already October 10, 2022.

Note that the letter came to the Bytwork team at the specified home address and in parallel to the legal address drc.law.

Further, only November 1, 2022 the case goes to court!

The appeal was considered for about 2 months, after which the date of the new hearing was set for 12/21/2022!

Second hearing?

On December 1, 2022, right before the new year, the Bytwork team gets a great message from the lawyers:

“Hello! The lawyer wrote that the decision of the Onega city court was canceled in the part of the bytwork website and the case was sent for a new trial to the court of first instance. Next, we are waiting for the case to be sent to the court of first instance and the appointment of a court session.”

AND:

“An important point, at this stage, after receiving the appealsionic determination, we can submit a request to the RKN and the site will be unblocked “

Everything is great, and we are very grateful to drc.law for the work done, but the matter is still not fully resolved, because:

“However, the case is not closed, because the issue of blocking depends on the second session of the first instance”

So, the new hearing will take place on February 3, 2023!

But until that moment, lawyers from DRC.law wrote a letter to the RKN to unblock the site (since the case in which we were blocked by the RKN no longer existed). And thanks to their letter to Roskomnadzor on January 23, bytwork.com was already unblocked!

Victory!

On February 3, 2023, the Bytwork team receives the following letter from attorneys:

“Hello! I have great news: during the meeting after the break, the prosecutor announced that he was dropping his claim regarding the requirements for bytwork. The refusal was accepted by the court, the proceedings were terminated. So everything ended well.”

That’s all! The Bytwork team won the case thanks to the lawyers from drc.law! They advised and accompanied Bytwork throughout the case!

Huge thanks to:

Inna Tverezovskaya.

And Anna Kuznetsova

They handled our case and answered all our questions in detail!

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