Russian authorities block paywall removal site Archive.today

Paywall bypass website Archive.today and several of its associated domains (including .is and .ph) have been blocked by Russian authorities, according to error pages that appeared when loading its websites.

The pages appear blocked as of Monday when TechCrunch visited the websites from the U.S. East Coast. 

A page in Russian said: “Access to the Internet resource Blocked by decision of the public authorities,” citing the Russian government agency responsible for internet censorship, Roskomnadzor.

According to Roskomnadzor’s listing for Archive.is, authorities confirmed that “access is limited to the page,” but did not give a reason at the time of publication. Archive.today does not list as blocked when TechCrunch checked.

A representative for Roskomnadzor did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s inquiries outside working hours in Moscow.

TechCrunch was still able to access the Archive sites from various other devices and networks, and was able to archive a web page regardless of the apparent block. It’s not clear how extensive the block is, or who implemented it.

Archive.today is a well-known website for archiving copies of websites, including content typically hidden behind a paywall or a subscription log-in. Wikipedia editors recently decided to remove hundreds of thousands of links to Archive.today, saying they’d discovered Archive.today’s code uses visitors’ web browsers — without their knowledge — to bombard the website of a blogger who was critical of Archive.today’s operations with junk network traffic.

The website operators behind Archive.today did not respond to a request for comment.

(h/t Ryan O’Horo on Bluesky)