Amendments to the "anti-piracy" law to block sites forever, signed by the president

Amendments to the Anti-Piracy Law were signed by the President of Russia, and will enter into force on May 1, 2015. Now sites that violate the relevant paragraphs of the law can be blocked forever. At the same time, music, books, software, films - everything except photographs are now considered "pirated" content.

True, the owners of sites accused of piracy have the opportunity to agree on everything with the copyright holders before the trial. Forever, the site will be closed only in case of two losses by the defendant in proceedings for claims of the same copyright holder. The Moscow City Court ordered the decision to block. In the case of a decision to block the court, this decision is reported to Roskomnadzor. The latter requires telecom operators to restrict users access to the site within 24 hours.

In addition, Roskomnadzor will add violators to the registry. After amending the law, it is now stated that "the removal of restrictions on access to such a site on the Internet is not allowed."

It is worth noting that one of the authors of the amendments, Deputy Minister of Culture Georgy Ivliev, believes that there can simply be no cases of erroneous blocking. “There are no errors in the judicial procedure,” the deputy minister commented on the situation. Later, Ivliev explained that the owner of a “good” site will always be able to prove his innocence in court, and the trial of the owner of a “white” resource is unlikely, since the copyright holder simply will not sue such a site.

A slightly different opinionadhere to lawyers who are familiar with copyright and the situation with the protection thereof in the global network. “This is an absolutely unprecedented norm for Russian legislation. According to Russian law, even a criminal record can be canceled over time, says the lawyer, so he considers perpetual blocking as a measure of responsibility for violation of exclusive rights by nonsense, which has no analogues, ”says Sarkis Darbinyan, lawyer at the Trunov, Aivar and Partners Bar Association.

“This measure hits either legal resources or resources that have problems with piracy, but they want to solve. Frankly pirated ones will continue to play cat and mouse - they will move to another address, ”says Karen Ghazaryan, a leading analyst at RAEC.

According to the representative of the Pirate Party of Russia Artem Kozlyuk, erroneous blocking may well be. One of the reasons is the possibility of blocking the site by ip, and not by url. As a result, several quite decent sites can fall under the distribution. On the other hand, ip can be changed, even within the same hosting, but with url it is already more difficult.

According to Yevgeny Oreshin, senior lawyer at Goltsblat BLP, amendments to the anti-piracy law do not completely eliminate the possibility of challenging the site’s blocking by its owner in court. The same decision of the Moscow City Court can be appealed on appeal, cassation and supervisory review in the Moscow City Court and the Supreme Court of Russia.

It is worth recalling that the original version of the “anti-piracy” law began to work on August 1, 2013. This law allows rightholders who have discovered facts of illegal distribution of video content on the Web to appeal to the court with a request to block the resource. Until May 1, this version of the law will be in force, and after May 1, 2015, the law will come into force, as amended.