Moscow City Court Ordered the Blocking of the Main ‘4PDA’ Domain

• 4PDA.ru has been restricted by Roskomnadzor following a relevant order from the Moscow City Court.
• The reason for the block seems to be a user’s post on the forum, linking to a pirate streaming site.
• The website has now jumped to a “.to” domain, but its Russian-based access and future remain doubtful.

A large and popular tech portal in Russia, 4PDA (“4pda.ru” and “w3bsit3-dns.com”), has been blocked by Roskomnadzor, following a relevant Moscow City Court order. The complainant that got the cogs of justice turning was “Match TV” (National Sports TV Channel LLC), who found it unacceptable that users of 4PDA posted links to portals that broadcasted the “Football 1” TV channel without a license. As such, the site was determined to create the technical conditions for the distribution of programs that violate copyrights, so access to it has now been permanently restricted.

The administrators of 4PDA reported that they never received any complaints from “Match TV” - otherwise, they would have taken care of the violations by removing the links or even suspending the users who posted them on the platform. As they explained, the violating posts were published on the site’s forum, and the links were part of a playlist. Checking and moderating such posts proactively is tedious and impractical, and that’s why they often go unnoticed.

To clarify, the particular website isn’t dedicated to streaming sites or piracy-related information - instead, it is focused on gadgets and tech products. Having 12 million unique visitors monthly, it is impossible to moderate everything posted on comments or the forums. However, the admins still handled every report that came from rightsholders with respect and moved quickly to address the violations. This time, they learned about the complaint when the blocking had already been decided.

The restriction of access to the website came into effect just yesterday, and the administrators were given no other choice than to dispute this legally. This will take a lot of time, naturally, so until then, the website has decided to make a move to the “.to” domain, so it is now online on “4pda.to”. Roskomnadzor may add the new domain to its blocklist, but for now, it remains online and accessible from Russia-based users.