After moves to block access to the Tor network, last month Russian authorities ordered the blocking of TorProject.org, the main domain of the privacy-focused anti-censorship tool Tor. With assistance from digital rights activists at Roskomsvoboda, Tor has now mounted a legal challenge to have the blocking reversed.

In an effort to control what its citizens can access on the internet, over the past several years Russian authorities have stepped up their blocking and censorship efforts.

Some initiatives, such as the blocking of websites and URLs to reduce copyright infringement, are commonplace outside Russia but local authorities have also begun defining additional content categories, including some political dissent, as illegal. As a result, not only is this content blocked by ISPs but those who provide means to unblock it can also find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

This has sucked some VPN providers into the debate and after they failed to comply, Russia blocked them too, with the inevitable fallout and collateral damage.

The rest of this article can be read on TorrentFreak.com

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