Russian Ministry Of Culture Publishes Draft Anti-Piracy Law; Requires Takedowns Within 24 Hours

from the bad-ideas dept

The Ministry of Culture has published the text of the draft law "On amendments to some legislative acts of the Russian Federation in order to stop the violations of intellectual property rights in the information and telecommunications networks, including the" Internet "," designed to combat Internet piracy - the amendments proposed to the Federal Law "On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information" and the Code of Administrative Offences.



According to the text of amendments, site owners and hosting providers will have to remove content that violates the copyright, or block access to it within a day after treatment the original.

Representatives of Internet companies (Yandex and Mail.Ru) responded with disapproval of the draft law in the comments to "Kommersant". The head of the legal service of Anton Malginova Mail.ru Group, the project was prepared without the involvement of industry experts, and existing legislation fully protects the rights holders.

Presumably as part of the overall agreement for Russia to be allowed to join the WTO , the Ministry of Culture there has published a draft of its anti-piracy law (via @PostActa ). Here's the google translation of a story on the roem.ru site As can be seen, the key element is a 24-hour takedown requirement. There's a range of fines for non-compliance, increasing rapidly according to the size of the business involved. What's not clear is how "violations" are to be established or how access is to be blocked if sites are outside Russia. The rapid take-down requirement would imply this is the usual "guilty until proven innocent" approach. That's also suggested by the following comments from leading Russian Internet companies, who are plainly unhappy with the proposal:This indicates that the draft law was drawn up without any input from people who actually understand the Internet. Given that extraordinary fact, it seems unlikely that groups representing the public were asked, either. We'll have to wait for more details to emerge to see how exactly things will work in practice, but it certainly looks like Russia is adopting the worst ideas from the West in its headlong rush to "respectability".

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Filed Under: copyright, russia, takedowns