Roskomnadzor for the Bitcoin ban in Russia

The appeals court appointed the case of the bitcoininfo.ru site for February 13, 2017. The Roskomnadzor Department for the North-West District expressed its position on the case, stressing the legality and validity of the contested court decision, in which Bitcoin was famously qualified as a “money surrogate”.

In September 2016, the administration of the niche information and analytical website bitcoininfo.ru applied to the “Digital Rights Protection Center” for help because of the blocking of the Bitcoin website subject matter by the decision of the Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg dated July 18, 2016 (case 2-10119 / 2016). Since no one notified the site administration of the trial, she became aware of the decision on the fact of blocking, i.e. when the decision had already entered into legal force and was executed by Roskomnadzor, the monthly period for appeal appeal of this judicial act, naturally, was missed.

Lawyers of the Center for Digital Rights Protection have restored the missed procedural term - an appeal against a court decision to block the website bitcoininfo.ru will be considered by the St. Petersburg City Court on February 13, 2017. The appealed court decision contains two flaws that can lead to its cancellation :
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- The administration of the bitcoininfo.ru website was not brought to participate in the court case, which was initiated by the prosecutor of the Vyborg district of St. Petersburg. At the moment, there is a dangerous tendency for Runet: the requirements of prosecutors to admit this or that information on the Internet that is prohibited for distribution in Russia and blocking websites are considered in special proceedings as statements of establishing facts of legal significance. These lawsuits do not provide for a defendant in the case. In such cases there is an applicant (prosecutor) and interested persons. The court is free to determine the circle of interested persons independently, but in the case of “prosecutor’s locks”, the courts almost always follow the logic of the prosecutor and bring only Roskomnadzor to trial, who is only a technical executor of the final decision and is not interested in the outcome of the case.

- In the current legislation of the Russian Federation there is neither a ban on the use of bitcoins, nor a ban on the dissemination of information about cryptocurrency. In the appealed decision, at the same time, naive and outdated arguments about the dangers and malware of cryptocurrency are given, the reference to Art. 27 of the Federal Law "On the Central Bank of the Russian Federation" (on the inadmissibility of the turnover of money substitutes in Russia) and p. 6 of Art. 10 of the Federal Law "On Information" (prohibits the dissemination of information for which criminal or administrative liability is provided). So, without understanding the device of the Bitcoin payment system, quickly resolving the question of what a “cash surrogate” is (although there is no definition of this concept in the law, and there are no criteria for assigning money to a surrogate), the Vyborg District Court of St. Petersburg the easy filing of the district prosecutor concluded that bitcoin is a surrogate for money and information about it should be prohibited for distribution in Russia.

By the flights of fantasy of regional prosecutors in the clearing of the RuNet, everyone was somehow accustomed ( block everything where the prosecutor doesn’t click ). Now we will get used to the amazing position of Roskomnadzor. In the process regarding the site bitcoininfo.ru, the Roskomnadzor Department in the North-West Federal District participates in the role of an interested person. More precisely, at the stage of consideration of the case in the court of first instance, the administration played in silence, did not appear at the court session, did not send objections, but decided to speak out on appeal.

The Office of Roskomnadzor for the North-Western District provided a response to the appeal of the site administration bitcoininfo.ru, in which it emphasized the legality and validity of the decision of the Vyborgsky District Court of St. Petersburg dated July 18, 2016 and fully agreed with the findings of the court of first instance, including attributing Bitcoin to monetary surrogate (and this despite the fact that currency supervision is carried out by the Bank of Russia). As an additional argument against the satisfaction of the appeal, the Roskomnadzor management indicated a violation of the appeal appeal deadlines (1 month, according to Article 321 of the RF CPC), which is quite funny, because the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation allows restoring the missed deadline (Article 112 of the CPC RF), which was done in the fall (by the definition of the Vyborg District Court of November 21, 2016, the missed procedural one for the site administration bitcoininfo.ru was restored). Yes, and obviously, lawyers of Roskomnadzor have some kind of knowledge gap in the CCP, otherwise they would understand that the case is not transferred to the appeals instance until the court of first instance resolves the issue of the procedural deadline for filing a complaint.

The appeals court appointed the case of the bitcoininfo.ru site for February 13, 2017. The Roskomnadzor Department for the North-West District expressed its position on the case, stressing the legality and validity of the contested court decision, in which Bitcoin was famously qualified as a “money surrogate”.

→ Recall of the PDC on Bitcoininfo.ru from Sarkis Darbinyan



On February 13, 2017 in the St. Petersburg City Court, we will listen to the fabrications of Roskomnadzor about money substitutes and live cryptocurrencies