Autumn exacerbation
The past week was rich in events related to the legal regulation of copyright in the global network. The topic of copyright and the Internet at least three times sounded in different contexts in the media, none of which can be called positive for Runet users.
KING BOLVANOK AND CONTENT TAX
Last month, the main “father” of the authors of all Russia, Nikita Mikhalkov, bowed to the First Person and presented to him his vision of how to defeat piracy on the Runet. The concept proposes an approach whereby a user who has paid for logging in to the system or has given some of the money for Internet traffic (the amount of using the network) as payment for using someone else's intellectual property receives unlimited access to all author's content.
Let me remind you that in 2010 Government Decree No. 829 “On remuneration for the free reproduction of phonograms and audiovisual works for personal purposes” approved the grounds and procedure for collecting tax for personal use of music and video using technical devices. The law and a special government decree established that one accredited organization would receive a legal monopoly on collecting fees due to authors for personal use of works. Such a monopoly was granted against a wide range of the author on a non-contractual basis. The general author's pie is subject to the section in the following proportions:
for music
40% - to the authors of works recorded in phonograms;
30% to performers whose performance is recorded in phonograms;
30% to phonogram manufacturers;
for the video:
40% to authors of audiovisual works;
30% to performers whose performance is recorded in audiovisual works;
30% to manufacturers of audiovisual works.
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RBC, having received a
I thought that maybe “pigs” and “players” stopped bringing the proper level of income to Mr. Mikhalkov and his team. But no. According to open reports of the Russian Union of Rights Holders for 2013 from their website :
The total amount of remuneration collected by the RSP in the reporting period - 3 401 214 500.34 rubles.
The total amount of remuneration distributed in the reporting period is -2,210,875,469.01 rubles.
The total amount of remuneration paid: 1,718,121,222.13 rubles.
Habrovchane took the liberty to count other people's money, and it turned out not so little.
It turns out that the daily amount of income from the collection of “tax tax”, which hangs in the RSP after the distribution of funds to all authors of the world for all the works created, is 3,261,202.82 rubles. It can be considered differently, but how not to consider, there is an excessive remuneration of the intermediary for the work on the collection and distribution of due remuneration.
However, to all appearances, this sum did not seem to be enough for the main OCUPant of the country, and he decided to ride the Runet on the hot wave of the fight against online piracy, adopting the experience of some countries to introduce a "tax on the Internet." The concept presented to the President provides for introducing into the Civil Code the concept of the so-called “global license”, which de facto means accepting a tax on content paid by telecom operators, which will actually be entrusted with the function of a tax agent to collect user fees and then transfer it to an accredited organization collective copyright management. According to Vedomosti, it is proposed to collect from $ 1 to $ 3 annually from each connected user.
Further, it is assumed that the collective authors' society of RSP, knowing who and how much relies from the common pie, will distribute the collected money to all the same musicians, directors, artists, playwrights, poets, photographers and everyone, everyone, all authors of the world for all objects copied to the network. copyright.
The concept of the CPR on combating piracy. Content Tax from Sarkis Darbinyan
In addition to the obviously odious proposals from Besogon of All Russia for the issuance of the RSP
1. legal protection of exclusive copyrights (including with the help of anti-piracy law No. 187 (ver.1.0) by the right holders is complicated due to new technological advantages obtained by “Internet pirates”.
In the digital age, file-sharing technologies will always be ahead of the law, allowing users to make unlicensed copies. And this is confirmed by numerous studies on this issue , as well as the latest conclusions made by the communication industry abroad (where the problem of digital piracy has been attempted to be solved for a long time).
2 it is necessary to create a publicly accessible information system (public copyright register) containing the objects of protection, conditions of use and distribution, as well as the identification and contact details of the rights holders. But such a register should not be voluntary, but mandatory for those who want to reclaim additional methods of protecting their exclusive rights from the state.
Such a system should be built on the model of the industrial property protection system (patents and trademarks), when an applicant must go through a number of formal procedures and register a state duty for issuing a security document to register the result of intellectual activity. Actually, a similar provision exists already in the concluded World Copyright Convention (revised in Paris on July 24, 1971), of which Russia is a member (as the successor of the USSR, acceding since 1973). So, according to Art. 3 of the Convention, any country in its national law may provide for the implementation of formal procedures for the provision of protection of copyright. This may be the deposit of copies, registration, reservation of copyright, notarization, payment of fees, production or publication of copies of the work on the territory of the state, etc.
However, in order for legal protection in certain ways provided by law to be provided to works, a number of changes must be made in the 4th part of the Civil Code, providing for the provision of protection only after completing the formalities (mandatory deposit, payment of state duty, registration of the copyright holder).
Few rightholders supported this concept, apparently not very trusting the management of their money to the OKUPant. Nevertheless, Shuvalov has already ordered to draft a bill based on the concept of the Mikhalkovskaya and submit an opinion to it before December 5, 2014.
The use of the proposed RSP mechanism for the legal regulation of the circulation of content on the Internet is possible only under the condition of a radical reform of copyright law. And it is obvious that an organization with an opaque remuneration distribution scheme and raider style of doing business, which has completely discredited the entire institution of collective management of copyright, is not able to achieve the goals stated in the document.
ANTIPIRATE LAW VER.2.0
More than a year has passed since the adoption of the Anti-piracy Law ver.1.0 (No. 187-FZ). About 300 applications were reviewed and dozens of resources were blocked , but I think no sensible person who knows how to use the keyboard, simple ways to bypass locks and information search will not be able to assert that the law was at least somehow effective. However, from the very beginning we were told that the law would undoubtedly be extended to all objects of rights. And indeed, it is rather strange to see a picture when lawmakers protect video content with special legal means of protection, and do not protect another kind of content. In winter, the Zheleznyak bill appeared, taken as the basis for the adopted bill, and in the spring of 2014 a bill expanding the effect of anti-piracy legislation was passed in first reading , but by spring, deputies in an uncharacteristic manner hampered further adoption of the law. Then there were many different versions of different interest groups , industries, ministries, and at one moment, after changing the foreign policy trend, it seemed that the law would be completely rejected, however, suddenly, on November 14, the law was passed in the third final reading :
The adopted version of the anti-piracy law ver.2.0 provides for the following provisions:
1. Placement by all site owners of the following mandatory information: their name, location, address, e-mail address or resource owner may provide on the site an electronic form for sending information by the copyright holders;
2. Obligation of the site owner to extrajudicially, within 24 hours from the moment of receiving the request of the copyright holder (or licensee) to remove the disputed content, or to refuse such removal by sending a notification;
3. The ability to restrict access to any website on the Internet in connection with the violation of exclusive rights to any work (except photos) for up to 15 days, as interim measures;
4. The possibility of including the site in the perpetual register, without the right to remove restrictions on access to such a site, for repeated unlawful placement of author's content, incl. information necessary to obtain such content using hyper-telecommunications networks (hyperlinks, torrent files, magnets, etc.)
Considering that civil law does not provide for any special formalities (mentioned above) for the protection of exclusive copyrights, and does not know the difference between different types of content, its value, creative value, as well as the subjects of its creation, it can be assumed that any violation of the rights to any work, any interested person (author, copyright holder, licensor, licensee, sublicensee) may judicially request blocking of the site. To develop this idea, I believe, is unnecessary, because it is easy to imagine how this mechanism can be implemented in practice. Influenced by the serious lobbying forces of the media industry, the State Duma deputies adopted a remarkable legal tool for blocking the largest rights holders of Russian services for a long time and quite unsuccessfully struggling with digital piracy. The result was an excellent response to the sanctions adopted against Russia.
Taking into account the ongoing legal claims of the right holders and the inclusion of Russia's largest social network in the pirated list of the US Trade Representative "301" , you can easily imagine the eternal blocking of VKontakte on the claim of some Sony Music. Well, or LJ blocking at the request of the author of the post, in case someone clicking the “share” button, posted on his page “literary work” of the author, who did not grant the right to use and distribute the work under a free license.
In general, the law draws a lot of opportunities for judicial trolling and copyright racket. I am afraid that the most difficult task will fall on the Moscow State Labor Organization, which will have to develop some mechanisms that limit the possibility of abuses of rights provided by the law and competitive wars.
RAPO, USER AND P.146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation
In the meantime, our legislators are thinking about how to protect the interests of the largest content producers, who believe that the only way to increase the sale of legal content and reduce unauthorized copying is to take tough legislative measures , in Russia they continue to judge users for distributing content by means of p2p. On November 12, news began to appear in the media that a criminal case was being investigated in Naberezhnye Chelny against a citizen who caused significant property damage to the largest American film studios: Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, 20th century. As always, RAPO , the daughter of the American Motion Picture Association (MPAA), which is actually a foreign agent, was involved in this story. It was she recognized as the representative of the victims - the largest American majors.
Even after the conviction of the Lopukhovs couple, the RAPO announced that they would prepare training manuals on how to plant for torrents . Actually promised and happened.
A particularly active RAPO office in Tatarstan, which sends people to the dock in batches, has achieved the initiation of a criminal case against Tatarstan resident Alexei Semyonov, who works as an IT worker in a local hospital.
According to the indictment, Semenov posted 10 torrent files in the local torrent tracker terabits.ru, with which anyone could download movies belonging to residents of Hollywood hills. The cost of rights, as was the case in the Lopukhovs' case , was sucked from the finger, and was not checked by the investigators or the prosecutor's office until the materials of the case were sent to court. The investigation estimates that the cost of the violated rights is about 11,000,000 rubles (which is equivalent to the average cost of 27,500 tickets to the cinema, in the case of retail sales of tickets for 400 rubles each). Thus, according to the prosecution, Semenov committed a serious crime, foreseen by part 3 of Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, causing major damage to the right holders. For this, he faces 6 years of imprisonment and multi-million civil claims.
The investigation was carried out with numerous violations, and the prosecution itself is more like a demonstrative spanking than a real desire to restore public justice and protect the authors of the works. In addition to Semenov, there are 4 other persons involved in the case, according to the investigators' computers, they found unlicensed files, access to which was granted without the prior consent of the copyright holders. During the joint special operation of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, the investigators with the help of Bulgarians sawed out the doors and forcibly removed computers from citizens' apartments. In general, all in the best traditions of the genre.
Today we see a vicious practice of barbarous protection of copyright comes to Russia, when ordinary Internet users are brought to criminal and civil liability for copyright infringement. Closing our eyes to digital reality, we are still trying to present a picture of the world in which copyright laws are good and tens of millions of Runet users are potential criminals who are not aware of the enormous damage they bring to the entertainment industry.
This case is another example of the fact that copyright law is hopelessly outdated. Its foundation is the Berne Convention, formed in the 19th century, in the pre-Internet era. Obviously, representatives of RAPO and MPAA are still in the 19th century, if they believe that in the digital era, using similar methods, one can defeat unlicensed copying by increasing their own sales of video content.
Together with activists of the Pirate Party of Russia, I proceeded to defend Alexei Semenov and we will demand an immediate cessation of the criminal case against the accused. Otherwise, a court ruling on Semenov may threaten with the discovery of a large-scale hunt for ordinary Internet users who are not versed in matters of the law and legality of content, but who love to watch videos and listen to music on the Internet.
We will support Semenov to the end and come up with a consolidated position against the obvious abuses of RAPO, aimed at scaring Russian Internet users in favor of American corporations with a very wild and flawed approach to the protection of copyrights to their films.
And so, what do we have? Two mutually exclusive concepts and a number of criminal cases against users for file sharing.
I sincerely hope that the copyrights will start to devour each other, using the adopted laws as tools to suppress the economic activities of competitors. Only this will make the decision makers realize that copyright law needs deep-seated changes, and the chosen prohibitive approach will not help the authors, only worsening the investment attractiveness of the Russian IT market. In the meantime, it’s time for us to unite again and say that the time has come to change copyright , or soon we can wake up on another Internet and in another country where the rights of media corporations and collective authors ’societies will become more important than the rights of authors and users.
PS: At the last RIW-2014, there was a “Legal discussion about video piracy in Runet”. , - , , «» ver.1.0, - . , - VS ?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/363037/
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