The Russian Way!

Russian Government Changed Its Mind

The Russian government decided to try and avoid the disastrous effects of misdirected copyright enforcement like it happened with the United States, while at the same time keeping piracy at bay. As such, the authorities have announced they would adopt a different approach.
At the moment, governments from all over the world are trying to fight digital piracy, either by dragging thousands of suspected copyright infringers into mass lawsuits or by pursuing the source – file-sharing portals. The problem is that neither of these methods worked – instead, their efforts only increased the popularity of such services, while doing nothing to stop piracy from spreading. As a result, a regime known as graduated response system was enforced in many countries. However, the governments failed to find a better solution – for example, launching more places on the Internet where people can purchase legal content. The authorities usually can’t understand that there is a vital difference between “hardcore pirates” and the ordinary BitTorrent users and therefore fail to suggest improved copyright legislation which wouldn’t undermine people’s freedom of speech and human rights. Although for the government it would be enough to educate the regular Internet users about copyright law, this isn’t enough for copyright owners, who are never tired of targeting file-sharers by the hundreds of thousands.

Vladimir Grigoryev, a head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, announced that they aren’t going to hold Internet users responsible for downloading as the United States does, and won’t bring owners of PCs to court. But this doesn’t mean that piracy will thrive in Russia. The authorities are determined to impose stricter rules regarding portals facilitating copyright violation. In other words, the owners of pirate websites will be hold liable for infringement, not end users. As for the users, they will soon be the subjects of educational programs, just as their American fellows.

Thus far, there are no details about the campaign, but Russian authorities seem to be confident. The experts doubt that the country’s entertainment industry, which is known for sending complaints about VKontakte (InTouch) and AllofMP3 clones for a while now, will be satisfied once such campaigns kick in.