The fight against piracy is gaining momentum. Is it necessary? And if necessary, how? What do you think?

June 21, 2013 will mark the year since the adoption of one of the most scandalous laws relating to the legal regulation of the circulation of content on the Internet - Federal Law No. 187-FZ, commonly known as the “anti-piracy law”. This law was added to Article 15.2. Federal Law No. 149-ФЗ On Information, which allowed blocking sites suspected of distributing pirated content through the Moscow City Court as security measures.

Let me remind you that the law applies to objects of exclusive copyright previously unknown to civil law, such as “films, including films, television films” (previously the Civil Code contained only the concept of “audiovisual work”).

Since the adoption of the law, many owners (and representatives of owners) of rights (AZAPI, NFMI, BSA, NP PPP, etc.) to other copyright objects, such as music, literature, software, have also insisted on the inclusion of all copyright objects in the law , which seemed to be a completely justified requirement, because the law cannot be applied selectively to only certain copyright objects, discriminating against holders of other rights. From that moment on, heated debates began in society over the expansion of the law. During this time, a bill was introduced by deputy Zheleznyak , as well as a number of other versions of the legal regulation of the circulation of copyright in the Internet. Society and IT business, one way or another, spoke out against the expansion of the law. The Internet Users Association and the Pirate Party of Russia, supported by Internet users, criticized most of the proposed legislative initiatives and launched the alternative project “Time to Change Copyright” , introducing a completely different concept of copyright law reform in the digital age.

The decision to expand and tighten the “anti-piracy law” at the highest level was postponed indefinitely. And recently, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov instructed the head of the Ministry of Telecommunications Nikolay Nikiforov to develop a common position on the Internet industry and the government on anti-piracy law, and submit the final document by the end of May 2014.


Currently, behind the closed doors at the Ministry of Communications, officials, media lobbyists and representatives of the largest Internet business in Russia, without the participation of society, continue to discuss various amendments to No. 187-FZ, and soon we are awaiting the final document on this issue to be submitted to the State Duma. Proposals from all sides come in the most daring, and what will be the result of these bilateral negotiations between business and government, we will see in the near future.

The head of RAEC explained how the interaction between representatives of IT business, copyright holders and officials occurs.


The next group meeting is scheduled for today, May 20. It is not too late yet, we are trying to influence the situation by declaring the need to abandon the new state information policy and start discussing a more productive position on copyright reform .


I dare to express my own judgment:
1. “Anti-piracy law” No. 187-FZ - does not correspond to the internal interests of Russia. This law is a product of the lobbying activities of the US Trade Representation , with which Russia signed an agreement on December 21, 2012 "to agree on an action plan by the parties to improve copyright protection in connection with the fight against copyright infringement on the Internet." Thus, the country in which the scandalous SOPA failed, made a lot of efforts in order to create in Russia an experimental training ground to tighten copyright laws on the Internet. In light of the recent events in the relations between the two empires, it seems to me absolutely unnecessary to contribute to the protection of such harsh methods of the priority interests of the largest US media corporations, a country in which the income from copyright exceeds the income from the supply of weapons and amounts to more than $ 168 billion. Strengthening the regime of protection of exclusive rights to the detriment of the freedom of dissemination of information by users of Russia does not seem reasonable. It also limits the possibilities of young Russian content-oriented startups with new media services. With all this, I want to note that Russia has not moved anywhere in the list of 301, which is the US Trade Representation,

2. "Anti-piracy law" No. 187-FZ, was extremely ineffective. I believe that Mr. Zharov wishes out wishful thinking to show that all the activities of the deputies, judges and ILV officials were not empty. For the entire duration of the law, only about 300 applications were filed. Satisfied about 170 of them. Users constantly ask me if the anti-piracy law works at all, because everything, as it was available, is so accessible and left. And this is quite obvious.
Firstly, with the help of simple gadgets to browsers, VPN, TOR, etc., for any user, all the same blocked pirate sites hated by copyright holders are also opened
. Secondly,many pirated sites have stocked up a whole pool of IP addresses and domains, and without any problems jump from one to another.
Thirdly, distributions in p2p appear like mushrooms. And if the copyright holder needs to take a lot of effort to block the page or site in the Moscow City Court, then for a new distribution on the torrent the user needs just a few minutes.
Fourth, in closed local networks, as well as in any eMule and other file hosting services that are not even paid attention to by the copyright holders, they contain terabytes of pirated content, for which you need to make very serious efforts that are not aimed at the result.
An example of the unsinkable "Pirate Bay", which still works like it did many years ago, despite all the measures taken by the copyright holders and the authorities (its owners were condemned, fined, domains were seized, access was blocked at the ISP level), it seemed to show the futility of all anti-piracy operations, but we see that today there are fools who believe that they can defeat network piracy.

3. "Anti-piracy law" No. 187-FZ is not productive.He is not able to help increase the market for "legal sales." The rightholders themselves complain about the imperfection of the law: a crooked legal technique, limitation of jurisdiction, the problem of proving the right to use the works in a proper way, a large amount of documents that must be submitted to the Moscow City Court, etc. At the same time, I cannot say that the first applicant is law ”, the company“ KinoBezGranits ”, soon after filing an application for interim measures, ceased to exist. And the reason for this is not total piracy on the net, but the outdated business of the company selling sliced ​​plastic with copies of films, which has long given off a grave smell.The company, which had the largest catalog of arthouse cinema in Russia, could succeed if it created timely on-line service with the possibility of streaming viewing. In my deep conviction, piracy is not at all a problem for the creative industry and business in connection with the sale of content. In order to be successful in the content business today, you need to sell users not content but a service. And I think these are obvious things. Examples of successful world cases constantly prove this. Piracy itself , expressed today in the form of private file sharing, is the engine of progress , forcing content producers to seek new business schemes for content logistics to the end consumer.


However, not everyone agrees with this position, and the general position of the PPR on piracy issues.

There are other opinions that boil down to the fact that copyright laws are pretty good, and they fairly protect public relations in the field of creativity. Proponents of this position insist that the problem lies in the numerous pirated services that violate the law, as well as in the millions of users who maintain the current level of piracy. And in order for the classic approach to copyright to work, it is necessary to tighten the requirements of laws and adopt specialized legal acts that will not allow copyright infringement on the Internet.


Let's see what else, in addition to blocking sites, proponents of the most stringent measures to combat online piracy offer today:

Penalizing users for downloading pirated content

It is proposed to establish and deploy a large-scale practice of collecting fines from users for illegal downloading (for example, Germany from 155 Euros to 1000 Euros) and slowing down or disabling Internet traffic for users caught in downloading / exchanging pirated materials (for example 3 strikes in France and 6 strikes in the USA). The Minister of Culture , Mr. Medinsky, has repeatedly called for the introduction of fines for users. It should be understood that in order to identify such users, it is necessary to put an end to the right of citizens to privacy of correspondence guaranteed by the Geneva Convention and the Basic Law, by monitoring all traffic using DPI filters.

The imposition of additional responsibilities on information intermediaries for the moderation of all content and independent blocking / removal of materials that violate the copyrights of third parties  

This proposal appeared on the initiative of lobbyists from the media business and was proposed by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. Such a proposal eliminates the need for copyright holders to independently search for pirated copies of digital content and go to court or authorized bodies to remove pirated content, placing all responsibility for compliance with the law on information intermediaries and at their own expense. Naturally, the owners of Internet services themselves, hosters and providers are not happy with this approach, according to which they become intermediaries by virtue of the law between users, owners of accounts in social networks, and website owners, on the one hand, and copyright holders, on the other hand. RAEC has repeatedly advocated the inadmissibility of such an approach.

Penalty of information intermediaries for non-fulfillment of obligations to block sites

In accordance with this approach, it is necessary to put pressure on those who contribute to the distribution of pirated content. Such a proposal was voiced in the draft of the Ministry of Culture of Russia. In accordance with the amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses, telecom operators and hosting providers are proposed to be fined for late blocking of sites suspected of distributing pirated content. They can be up to 300 thousand rubles. for citizens, up to 600 thousand rubles. - for officials and up to 1 million rubles. for legal entities.

Creation of a specialized police unit to investigate network piracy and hold users accountable

An example of such a unit is the PIPCU (Police IP Crime Unit) in England, the City of London Police Department for Intellectual Property Crimes, which, receiving funding from the state budget, deals exclusively with copyright infringement issues, representing the interests of Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the British organizations of copyright holders. PIPCU employees segregate domain names of pirated sites, send fines, criminalize users and site owners. In fact, in Russia there are already unspoken alliances between the employees of the “K” department and the agents of the RAPO (daughter of the American MPA), who are engaged in similar activities



Distribution of educational letters and warnings to users convicted of illegal file sharing about the inadmissibility of a violation of the law and the application of possible sanctions.

A similar proposal has recently appeared in the UK . Internet service providers will send out such letters of happiness to users. At the same time, one user has a limit for sending letters — no more than four letters by regular or electronic mail. With each letter, the wording will be harsher, but they should not contain threats or hints of consequences for violators. Of course, the copyright holders wanted to have access to a database of users who download content illegally in order to be able to further influence them in a judicial proceeding, but such an offer was rejected.

Entrusting information intermediaries with the responsibility of copying and storing information (including IP addresses, logs and other information about user activity) about users participating in illegal file sharing and its presentation to copyright holders or law enforcement agencies. To disclose user data.

The first such anti-piracy method was undertaken in 2004. The RIAA and MPAA demanded judicial access to the lists of trespassing users that tracker administrators have, but the US Supreme Court rejected the petitions, deciding that the evidence of user guilt is clearly insufficient. therefore, providers should not disclose information about them. Subsequently, the MPAA was sued by Valence Media LLC, the operator of the site www.torrentspy.comaccused of aiding piracy by simplifying the search and download of copyrighted material. In a decision of May 29, 2007, a federal judge of the Central District of California in Los Angeles ordered the defendant to create log files containing information about what users are trying to find on the Web, as well as apply a filtering system for links to pirated materials FileRights. Thus, a precedent was created in California, according to which the administration of trackers should keep a log of visits and provide data from it at the first request of copyright holders or authorities.

In the meantime, deputies and officials were thinking about expanding the "anti-piracy law", an obligation was introduced in Russia to monitor all network users and accumulate information. After the adoption of the “law on bloggers” No. 97-FZ in Russia, the obligation of the organizer of the dissemination of information on the Internet to store information “on the facts, reception, transmission, delivery and (or) processing of voice information, written text, images, sounds or other electronic messages from Internet users and information about these users for 6 months. ” The goals of copyright holders and authorities in the field of “content filtering” are obviously different, but both of them are united in their desire to control the network. I guess the rightholders themselves and their representatives will take this opportunity and demand from the “organizers of the dissemination of information” (for now, one can only guess who exactly will fall into this category) to disclose data about users suspected of piracy. This will provide an opportunity for copyright holders, their representatives and legal agencies to establish a new practice on the American and German models with the mass involvement of citizens involved in uncontrolled network copying, administrative and criminal liability, as well as monetization of content by penalizing users.

As usual, Internet users themselves are not involved in discussions on the further development of legislation governing the civil circulation of content on the network. Therefore, it is important for us to form an independent opinion of the Internet community to represent our position on the further adoption of legislative measures to combat piracy, in connection with which I ask you to vote:

UPD: I thought a bit and decided in the light of recent events on the introduction of DRM in browsers and network discrimination related to the restrictions of operators on p2p traffic, I decided to add one more item “We must fight piracy with the help of technical means (the widespread introduction of DRM and network file sharing discrimination)