Collection of signatures for the legalization of torrents!

Two weeks ago, Putin proposed considering all of the community’s initiatives with 100,000 signatures on the Internet. Once suggested - it is necessary to take.

Now, by law, you can put every user of torrents for 6 years. For "unauthorized copying of intellectual property." It turns out that for copying a file on the Internet the punishment is stricter than for killing a person. This law must be changed. An hour ago, I started collecting signatures under the appeal regarding the most acute problem - copyright. You can subscribe at trupirate.ru in a week I will forward the appeal to the presidential administration.

If the elections of governors were returned before the elections and the registration of parties was simplified, then it would be worthless for the government to deal with article 146. Moreover, no one heard about the election of governors, and the criminal prosecution for torrents concerns everyone. From their legalization to the authorities there will be a real bonus in the eyes of Runet. They will take such a step.

I’ve been defending the Lopukhovs for half a year now, and in spite of the first hearing won, I clearly see that without political resonance, we won’t be able to withstand all of Hollywood. Therefore, Andrei has now recorded a video message:



Collecting so many signatures in the one and a half weeks remaining before the election is not an easy but feasible task. There are 40 million people in Runet, and we need only a hundred thousand!

Today I will contact the administration of all the largest sites in Runet and ask them to support the action. Tomorrow I will go out with my friends to collect signatures for Baumanka and Moscow State University. If necessary, then on the same day I will go around all the political movements asking for help - from “ours” to “apple”.


Mr. President, we hope you are on our side.

Elections are too rare to miss such a chance. The text of the appeal under the cut, suggest revisions if you consider it necessary:

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

The state of public life in modern Russia is such that it is difficult for ordinary people to coordinate their activities and achieve at least some improvements. Everywhere corruption, bureaucratic obstacles and strangulation of public initiative. Therefore, we ask for your help and participation.

We understand that the legal regulation of the Internet space is not included in the list of your duties, but as Prime Minister you have the opportunity to directly influence the public life of our country.

We, Russian Internet users, ask you to pay attention to the critical situation in the field of intellectual property protection on the Internet. Due to the imperfection of our legislation and its inconsistency with the realities of the Internet, a legal incident arose that made it possible to prosecute each Internet user for unauthorized copying of intellectual property.

Such actions fall under Article 146. Criminal Code and are prosecuted by imprisonment for up to 6 years. It turns out that for copying a file on the Internet the punishment is stricter than for killing a person. We consider this situation to be deeply erroneous.

The very copying and distribution of information is the essence of the Internet, so when working on the network it is impossible to avoid breaking article 146, written in 1993 and not taking into account the realities of the Internet. For example, it is simply impossible for her to assess the damage caused, since There is no direct connection between copying on the Internet and the profit of the copyright holder. American corporations are actively using this and are constantly prosecuting our citizens under dubious pretexts. Every year the situation is getting worse and starting to take on fantastic proportions.

So, in 2012, the Lopukhov family was charged with copyright infringement of 38,000,000,000 rubles. They are accused of the fact that they allegedly distributed 24 films on the Internet, moreover, "on a large scale." As reported in the media, the unprecedented amount of damage imputed to Andrei and Natalya Lopukhov is equivalent to the annual turnover of Russian film distribution.

It follows from the text of the indictment that the Lopukhovs did not take active steps to market counterfeit audio and video products. They simply posted links to audio-video productions, but they did not influence and could not influence who and how used these links.

The daily actions of millions of users, similar to those of the Lopukhovs, fall within the scope of Art. 1272 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and on the basis of this are legitimate since each of them, both when posting and further downloading information, acts to satisfy its own needs.

An analysis of civil law and the clarifications of the Plenums of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation allows us to conclude that the placement and further exchange of information using torrent trackers is legal in cases where the information posted on the torrent tracker was obtained from a copy of the medium that was legitimately entered into the civil circulation works.

Consequently, non-commercial file sharing should not fall within the scope of Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The use of torrents and similar sites should be officially recognized as legal.

We ask you to use your high moral authority to help, in these political circumstances, to transform the Russian segment of the Internet from the gray zone of legal speculation used by foreign corporations to blackmail Russian citizens and organizations into a cultural legal space that is destined to become a bastion in the near future freedom of speech, democracy and economic development.

To rectify the situation, it is necessary that the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation adopt a decision or give an explanation in another way regarding the use of torrent trackers, social networks and other sites for the exchange of information between users. In such explanations, it should be noted that the exchange of information by Internet users through torrent trackers is legal if the information originally posted in the torrent was obtained from a copy of the medium of the work that was legitimately entered into civil circulation.

We express our modest hope that our letter will be published in the Russian media, for example, in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, where a number of your articles have been recently published, so that our problems will become public knowledge and free and unbiased discussion.

Perhaps our problems may seem comical to you, and not worth the attention of the Prime Minister. But now more than 40 million people use the Internet in Russia. Given the dynamics of Russia's development, we will soon have 80 million, and these 80 million will be recruited from the most educated and proactive part of the 140 millionth population. The 21st century will inevitably create new means of communication, new forms of power and new types of political life. This is already happening before our eyes.

Speaking for the legalization of non-commercial file sharing, you can count on the sympathy of all Russian network users. The Internet will see you as a national leader, to whom the rights and freedoms of citizens are more important than the dubious earnings of foreign companies.

A detailed description of the problem and suggested solutions are outlined in20-page application prepared by a leading Russian copyright specialist R.A. Tyurina.