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Russian Media Watchdog Unblocks Amazon Storage Service Website

The Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor has removed Amazon's storage service website from its list of banned websites, the agency wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

The decision to unblock the website was taken after Amazon restricted access to a webpage which contains downloads for playing poker.

On June 22, the media watchdog blocked the 888poker webpage on the Amazon Simple Storage website, also known as Amazon S3, on the request of the Russian Customs Service. The agency said that the webpage violated Russian law “on the regulation of the organization of gambling.”

The entire website was blocked, not only the offending webpage, the Meduza news website reported.

Before blocking the service, the state watchdog asked the company to restrict access to the page, but they refused to do so, the RBC news website reported.

In August last year, Roskomnadzor moved to block Wikipedia because of webpages containing information on drugs but later cancelled the move.

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