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Anti-piracy law
The "anti-piracy" law came into force on August 1
Anna Akhmadieva | Izvestia | 2013.08.01
Copyright holders are ready to flood the Moscow City Court with actions against Internet websites hosting pirated content following the enactment on August 1 of "anti-piracy" amendments to Russia's federal law protecting copyrighted material online.
The enactment is intended to enable video copyright holders to earn, and to fill the Internet with sources of lawful videos.
As a result of the new law, a few dozen legal sites will appear in the Russian segment of the Internet to host legal copyrighted high-quality videos, said Alexander Zharov, head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Communications (Roskomnadzor). Moreover, the law will give large sites which already distribute legal videos, the opportunity to earn lawfully.
The law reads that all civil suits in Russia related to movie rights are to be heard in the Moscow City Court. Copyright holders must also turn to this court for injunctive orders to block websites hosting pirated movies. After the court has considered such an application, its order will electronically arrive at Roskomnadzor, which will give the host "notice in Russian and English of breach of intellectual [property] rights, identifying the product, author and copyright holder, and requiring to take steps to remove such information."
The Moscow City Court is ready to consider copyright holders' applications, MCC press service head Anna Usacheva told Izvestia.
So far it will be temporary restraining orders to block websites for 15 days until appropriate applications are filed to be dealt with as usual actions, Usacheva said. The Moscow City Court expects to develop an online mechanism of dealing with such cases, but it is too early now to predict any results, she said.
Our comment:
Maxim Labzin, INTELLECT-S partner, was interviewed by Izvestia:
"Copyright holders' applications must be heard not later than the following day after its submission, This is the general rule for injunctions in all cases," INTELLECT-S partner Maxim Labzin told Izvestia.
"If judges do not meet the deadlines and miss due dates, it means injunctions and judgments will be worse founded and less warranted. Haste will lead to overkills," Labzin said.
Copyright holders which Izvestia interviewed, expect that hundreds of suits will be filed with the Moscow City Court despite Roskomnadzor's advice to name "libraries" of movies instead of separate videos.
But even one hundred suits may cause the court problems because, according to Izvestia's sources, only two judges will deal with cases involving pirated movies.
This may not be enough, considering the number of likely suits, because pirated content is hosted on hundreds of websites, experts say.
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