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From Internet to Jail
// Pirates are disconnected from Russian Internet
Amendments to Russian law, destined to put an end to uncontrolled downloading of books, videos, and music from the Internet, come into force today. According to these amendments, works published on the web will be protected by the law in the same way as those published on paper, CD, or DVD. It means the owners of pirate websites might be punished by up to 5 years of imprisonment.
Amendments to the law “About copyright and allied rights” were ratified in July 2004. However, they come into force on September 1, 2006. Basically, they make legal the concept of “notifying everyone” which brings the Internet under the jurisdiction of law. Thus, texts of books or mp3 music files published on the web have the same copyright protection as normal books or CDs, and come under article 146 of the Criminal Code of Russia (“Violation of copyright and allied rights) which allows a punishment of imprisonment for up to 5 years for pirates.
There was practically no legal protection like this before. The law “About copyright” was adopted in 1993, when hardly anyone in Russia ever heard of the Internet, so the corresponding articles in this law were worded rather vaguely. By the way, it was the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade that lobbied the introduction of Internet law into Russian legislation. The Ministry is also leading the talks on Russia’s accession to the WTO, in which the issue of fighting against pirates in Russia has been one of the most important. As for the 2-year delay of the law, the legislators decided to give the time to mp3-website owners, for instance, to sign license contracts with the suppliers of music.
However, it did not happen. Experts estimate that 97 percent of music spread in Russian Internet now is still piratic, and many mp3 websites sell western music to western customers. Legal Internet market is estimated at less than $1 million per year, while the turnover of just one of the major illegal Russian websites, offering some 850,000 of musical tracks for 12—15 cents, reaches up to $25—30 million, according to different estimates.
People of the industry call the anti-pirate amendments “revolutionary”. “It is a very important step on the way to make Internet market legal,” believes Vladimir Dragunov, legal advisor of the representative office of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in Russia. “There are no legal sites because no one could fight against internet-pirates—it was difficult to explain the word-splitting that existed before September 1 to judges.” “Building the legal market begins today,” agrees Sofia Sokolova, editor-in-chief of zvuki.ru website. “Authors now have a new means to assert their rights effectively. Websites themselves will now be obliged to find copyright holders.” Vladimir Dragunov pointed out that record labels will not fight against small-scale pirates. “The problem is not to destroy each pirate site,” he said. “It is necessary to change the ratio between piratic and legal Internet from 99 to 10 percent, for instance.
However, other experts interviewed by Kommersant do not share in such optimism. “Russian laws might be good, but they are not implemented very well,” said Vadim Uskov, head of law company Uskov and Partners. “If usual sellers of counterfeit goods are not caught on the street, then no one will catch the owners of websites in the Internet where it is hard to identify them.” Vadim Uskov reminded that a new law “About advertising” prohibiting spam came into force on July 1. “Nothing changed after it came into force,” says Uskov. “The same will happen with these amendments. We need decisive measures, like in China for instance. They put the criminal responsibility for publishing pirate products on Internet providers, so the latter check their websites many times a day.”
Besides, the law itself might hinder bringing pirates to responsibility. The matter is that nearly all pirate sites do not consider themselves as such. They act under the cover of licenses issued by so-called collective societies for managing the rights (for example, Russian Society for Multimedia and Digital Networks). Because of legal loophole, not taken care of before September 1, such societies can give out “licenses” even for mp3 tracks of singers with whom they have no agreements. Moreover, the State Duma will hear a new package of laws—the 4th part of the Civil Code of Russia, uniting all rules of protecting copyrights and allied rights. Responsibility for Internet piracy is not worded clearly in this law. So, this code of laws too, for passing which Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev spoke, can play right into pirates’ hands, because all laws that came into force today will lose their legal force when this new law is passed.
Alexander Voronov
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 01, 2006
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