Russian adult torrent resource Pornolab is leveraging Emercoin’s Decentralized Domain Zone to bypass Russia’s latest ban on certain websites.

Pornolab, which was banned in Russia last month, used Emercoin to create a functioning mirror site in a manner similar to Localbitcoins, which the country’s regulator Roskomnadzor also recently cut off.

“We’ve received notification from Roskomnadzor with a demand to delete illicit information,” a post on the site’s forum states:

“However, what exactly they need us to delete isn’t mentioned.”

The site reproduced a portion of the request, which confirmed access from Russian IP addresses would be “limited.”

Decentralization To The Rescue

A press release from Emercoin confirmed the partnership, which as of last week is fully up and running.

Using Emercoin’s DNS solution, Pornolab now operates an official mirror site, Pornolab.lib, one of the service’s four decentralized domain zones: .lib, .coin, .emc and .bazar.

Further mirrors Pornolab.cc and Pornolab.biz are also available.

Emercoin has offered decentralized alternative DNS since 2014, and is well patronized in Russia due to the patchy and unpredictable nature of address blocking by lawmakers. As an example, adult sites such as Pornhub can often be blocked, unblocked and reblocked, seemingly at random, allegedly in accordance with the same piece of legislation.

“Russian authorities have already used the centralized nature of DNS networks to ban LinkedIn, online library Flibusta, [Pornlab] and PornHub, as well as LocalBitcoins,” the press release continues.

It adds that lawyers from lobby group Roskomsvoboda were taking steps to challenge the arbitrary rulings leading to websites being blocked.

“They have filed and submitted appeals as to illicit rulings violating substantial and procedural regulations,” Emercoin states.

Bitcoin Legality Could Reverse Trend

Localbitcoins meanwhile was quick to set up its .net mirror site, with full functionality restored to Russian markets. However, the softening of the country’s legal stance on Bitcoin has the potential to decriminalize the site’s content in the near future.

Responding to a user request, administrators stated however that a similar mirror site arrangement is not appropriate for Germany, where Localbitcoins was also forced to suspend services back in 2014.