Roskomnadzor unblocks ‘Genius’ website after it removes banned songs

The website Genius — one of the world’s largest collections of song lyrics — is once again accessible in Russia. The federal censor, Roskomnadzor (RKN), lifted restrictions on the site after it deleted the lyrics of banned songs. 

“The forbidden texts were removed, and Genius was unblocked,” the VKontakte group Genius Russia reported on Friday, August 6. “In the RKN registry, all of the previously blocked track pages are now listed as unblocked, hence, they no longer hinder visting Genius.”

Russia’s federal censor blocked Genius.com on July 26. According to the Internet rights group Roskomsvoboda, dozens of the website’s pages were added to RKN’s blocklist at the same time. All of the blocked webpages contained lyrics of songs that have been flagged by Russian courts over the past several years for allegedly encouraging extremism or suicide.