Minister of Culture does not support the project of introducing copyright collection on the Internet

Photo: M. Stulov / Vedomosti

At a closed meeting with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky said that he was not a supporter of the project of copyright collection on the Internet, Vedomosti writes . The meeting with Shuvalov was also attended by the Minister for Open Government Affairs Mikhail Abyzov, the Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov, director Nikita Mikhalkov, representatives of Internet companies, telecom operators and copyright holders.

“I am not an ardent supporter of the global license primarily because I do not know how to answer the five professional arguments voiced by the Minister of Communications. He understands this issue much deeper. I’ll add only the sixth argument that if you accept the global license system in an unprotected form, it will badly affect the cinema, ”Medinsky said.

It is worth noting that earlier it was the Ministry of Culture that prepared the draft amendments under the so-called global license. The author of this idea is the Russian Union of Copyright Holders, the organization’s council is headed by Nikita Mikhalkov. The essence of the idea is the need to obtain a global license by Russian telecom operators from an organization accredited by the state. This initiative in the spring of 2015 has already received negative reviews from most ministries and departments of the Russian Federation that are relevant to this area.

He is particularly active against the draft global license of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media, headed by Nikolai Nikiforov. At the meeting, which is discussed above, the head of the department once again declared the technical impossibility of introducing a global license. Even if the necessary equipment for the introduction of a global license appears on the market, it will take about another $ 5 billion to implement such an idea.

According to Medinsky, piracy on the Internet is worth fighting using the provisions of the current anti-piracy law.

However, Nikita Mikhalkov believes that this law does not work, and it is necessary to introduce new ways to combat piracy. At the same time, representatives of the copyright holders present at the meeting reported that they lacked the current law.