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

from the bad-ideas dept

Thu, Jan 31st 2013 3:40am — Glyn Moody

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: 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.
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: 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.
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

17 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 31 Jan 2013 @ 3:42am

Given that extraordinary fact

Actually it's usual business. The MAFIAA and their minions will just rush stuff through without asking anyone but themselves hoping to get laws approved so they can keep their criminal business running within the law.

SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP. Just to mention the recent ones.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 3:52am
  
  Re:
  Not to mention Sonny-Bono, the Statue of Anne and others.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:26am
    
    Re: Re:
    There are lots of statues of the old dear. Did you mean Statute?
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    - Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 8:13am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Why yes, yes I did. My content-addled hands moved too fast for the "tue" to stick.
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Kirion, 31 Jan 2013 @ 3:55am

It seems like draft law is a result of this:

http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/3619
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Zakida Paul (profile), 31 Jan 2013 @ 4:07am

All this tells me is that corruption is in every country of the world. It does not matter if a government is right leaning, left leaning or in the centre ground; governments are not in charge of the country. The real rulers are the multi national corporations who think nothing of buying policy and laws with 'donations'.

The entire system does not need a reboot, as I originally thought. It needs to be completely dismantled and rebuilt.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 4:59am

"I have bad news and worse news. Under the anti-piracy laws, you need to take down this non-specified link within 24 hours, or you'll be sued and your site taken down."
"What's the worse news?!"
"The notice was supposed to reach you yesterday."
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:08am
  
  Re:
  Welcome to Perceptional Insanity Troopers.
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Josef Anvil (profile), 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:12am

Worst thing ever
All this shows is how powerful communication is to humanity. As far as most governments around the world are concerned, the internet is the worst thing ever.

It's difficult to shape the thoughts of the population when they can just go online and communicate with people from around the world and make up their minds based on experience rather than propaganda. Copyright is just one of the best tools to attack freedom to communicate and share. I'm just tired of the piracy and theft being used to describe sharing.

Quick tangent. If our governments were really concerned for "the children" why aren't there free online textbooks for every public school. The tech is certainly there. But...but...but... what about the textbook publishers' income. Ummm who the hell cares? Textbooks are supposed to be facts that are meant to be shared for the betterment of society as a whole, not the profit of the publishers.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:26am
  
  Re: Worst thing ever
  Exactly, and what these knuckle dragging "leaders" fail to realize is that a well informed and educated populace is conducive to greater progress, efficiency and therefore profits. The downside, for them, is that they would have to actually learn something themselves and possibly act like a human being.
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Roger, 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:41am

So what happens if you are a private individual, off-grid and at the start of an annual vacation, when some rights holder makes a totally unsubstantiated claim, or else deems something you've posted to be not fair use, but "theft"?

Same for businesses too small to have a member of staff, or a web development service on remittance, dedicated to hovering over an "unpublish" button.

The presumption of guilt, the time scales, this is another thuggish attack on the feasibility of web publishing for individuals, small businesses, common carriers, and others; all made possible by the fact that big content has write permissions for international IP agreements, whereas the rest of us only have (partial) access and (partial) read permissions.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 5:49am

"This indicates that the draft law was drawn up without any input from people who actually understand the Internet."

Hey, people who knew nothing about cars used to write up laws about cars, what's the big deal?

Doesn't everyone obey that 100+ year old law in PA that says whenever a horse is nearby and scared of your car that you must stop the car, take your car apart, throw the parts in the bushes, and wait for the horse to leave?

(for those who don't know, the historical reason behind this law is that when cars were invented, horses were often terrified of seeing cars moving without anyone pulling them, which caused them run around like crazy, ignoring all commands given to them. This was especially bad when horses had a rider, or were pulling a wagon, which seriously injured people)
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 6:40am

so, who decides what needs to be taken down? what compensation is there for false take downs? as there was no input from anyone else other than i suspect the entertainment industries, it sounds very much to me like a Russian version of SOPA/PIPA/ACTA. i bet it has been promoted by the USA in some way. when you think that the bills mentioned above were stopped in their entirety, but are still being implemented a bit at a time, anyone that thinks this fight is over is in cloud cuckoo land. the entertainment industries will get what they want, simply because it is in the various governments interests t for it to happen. that is because it allows the governments to carry out the spying on everyone that they want to do, by incorporating their bits into what the industries want. the only unhappy bunnies, as usual, are those that get hit and suffer, the ordinary people!!
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Atkray (profile), 31 Jan 2013 @ 7:02am

The ISP's don't understand
"existing legislation fully protects the rights holders"

The rights holders don't want full protection, they want the entire global military complex to aggressively persecute individuals at their beck and call.
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Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 7:34am

Please remember this is Russia we're talking about.
If one of Putins cronies does an unfair takedown thats OK, but if a member of the public does it, Putin is likely to simply have them murdered.
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Pixelation, 31 Jan 2013 @ 7:56am

In Soviet Russia, copyrighted material takes you down.
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- Anonymous Coward, 31 Jan 2013 @ 8:14am
  
  Re:
  Nonononono!
  
  In Soviet America, copyright takedowns YOU.
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