Russia's Leading Social Network VKontakte Cleared Of Copyright Infringement
from the surprising,-but-maybe-irrelevant dept
VKontakte is not only the largest social networking site in Russia, but is also one of the biggest unauthorized repositories of copyright music, thanks to its file-hosting service. Given the moves to clamp down on copyright infringement in Russia, it seemed only a matter of time before VKontakte found itself in hot water because of this. And yet, as Torrent Freak reports, something unexpected has happened:
Russia's largest social network has been cleared of copyright infringement charges by a court in St. Petersburg. A lawsuit brought by a famous local records label alleged that VKontakte should be held liable for music piracy carried out by its users. However a judge ruled that there was no way the site could monitor all user uploads for infringement and in any event, no operator of Vkontakte had anything to do with the downloading, recording, and dissemination of any infringing content.
This is, of course, an eminently sensible ruling, because it is indeed impossible for VKontakte to check every upload for possible infringement, not least because copyright law is so complex that only courts are competent to make that call. However, it looks like unauthorized uploads may be going away anyway:
Earlier this year the site's founder said that talks were underway with Universal, Warner and Sony with a view to making their content available to the site's users as part of a licensing deal.
It seems inevitable that part of that deal would be the elimination of all those unofficial copies. VKontakte's recent court win will at least strengthen its negotiating position when it comes to arguing over the details.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, russia, secondary liability, social media
Companies: vkontakte
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Which is rather shocking if you consider Soviet Russia.
Earlier this year the site's founder said that talks were underway with Universal, Warner and Sony with a view to making their content available to the site's users as part of a licensing deal.
Which is much more sensible. Strike a deal with the network so it can provide the songs for free and promote stuff to generate revenue such as shows, merchandise, physical media, crowdsourcing new albums etc. A pity they are being dragged into doing it right and not by their own initiative.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, whatever they're calling themselves.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
>.>
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So, why didn't MPAA execute a SWAT raid on VKontakte owner's residence and ask for the extradition of the "criminals" who run it? And when the court ruled it said that the site is not responsible for the infringement of its users.
Looks like the reverse Soviet Russia jokes have some truth to them.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Possibly because Russia is still more likely to shoot US agents than cooperate with them. This makes it much more difficult to infringe on another countries sovereignty.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Do you enjoy pain? Because that's pretty much the only reason anyone would set-up and run the (closed source) utorrent server on Linux when there are perfectly viable, free (speech/beer) alternatives like Deluge that you can just apt-get (or yum) install. It even has a windows port.
And then you are using a VPN? Like they say on the Internet: lolwut? Last I checked, it isn't a crime to seed Arch (or Debian, or Ubuntu, or...), and they have plenty of mirrors which makes regional restrictions moot.
All of this combined makes your post...suspicious. Why can't you be honest?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
Getting away with illegal actions or evading regional restrictions are not the main reasons to use a VPN.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Only God knows what they have agree to, behind the curtains.
Coming from Russia where laws are much more enforced by political necessity than for any real sense of justice, I can only imagine what the deal was.
That laws probably will be used against foreign companies to the letter.
Now that the Russian government saw what they could do with the help of friendly social network companies thanks to the US that VKontakte is probably classified as national security interest.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fuck copyright
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]