Spring copyright thaw

As usually it happens in spring, warmth comes, and with it comes joy. And everything at this time seems better than it is. But even greater joy comes when awareness of the positive changes occurring in our life. In the field of copyright regulation, a number of quite interesting events also occurred over the past week, which may add some positive emotions to Russian Internet users.

OKUPAM CUT WINGS

The model of collective management of copyright in the Russian Federation has for many years discredited the whole institution of copyright protection and has been criticized from various sides. However, one of the most influential lobbies from the “creative elite”, in spite of everything, confidently continues to hold in its hands the levers of exclusive copyright management throughout the federation. Let me remind you that the report of the working group on accession to the WTO in November 2011 stated that "the Russian Federation will review its system of collective management of rights in order to cancel non-contractual management of rights within five years after the entry into force of Part IV of the Civil Code", that is, by January 1 year 2013. However, this never happened. Despite the protocol of accession to the WTO, which seemed to have obliged Russia to change the model of collective management of copyright and related rights (paragraph 3 of Article 1244 of the Civil Code), the accreditation of RAO and WIPO was extended under the same conditions for another 10-year period. At the same time, the Constitutional Court did not give an assessment of this legal conflict, stating that the issue of revising the management model of the CCOs falls within the competence of the president and the government (see “Kommersant” of November 28, 2014), although he had previously recognized the constitutionality of the protocol.

At the same time, the court considering the case on the claim between WIPO and “Textile-market“ Moder men's clothing ”for the fact that the company did not pay the tribute due to the OCUP, very skillfully got out of the situation. At the same time, the court acknowledged that, on the one hand, the Russian Federation violated an international agreement, since the deadline for changing the Civil Code expired on March 1, 2013, but on the other hand, it concluded that the article allowing non-contractual rights management has not been canceled so far. Given that the provisions of the Russian law remain in force, and the WTO rules are not directly applicable, the WIPO claims for compensation for the related rights of Denis Maidanov, Valery Meladze and Eva Polna (although not having agreements with WIPO) are completely legitimate. The situation most likely would have been the same as it had already been formed in other decisions of the courts against OCUPs, which constantly supported accredited copyright societies, if the court, which made the final decision on the case , did not see the matter from a different angle.
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Thus, the court decided that despite the legal requirements of WIPO, he declared to their inappropriate Respondent. After examining the video, the court found that the seller itself transmitted the music from a portable radio receiver, while moving away from which the sound became much quieter. And given that there were no instruments in the hall capable of transmitting music to the whole room, and the vendor’s recorded video showing that he used the radio for personal purposes, there is no reason to believe that music played on the radio in the store as instructed by the employer. Thus, the store should not be liable for the violation of the obligation to deduct the CCUP monthly remuneration for the use of related rights of artists.

Probably, today it is the best solution for the management of shops, cafes and other enterprises who disagree with the established procedure of non-transparent predatory collection of author's rewards. Therefore, those owners of shopping, entertainment and food establishments who do not want to pay RAO and WIPO can donate a portable music player (for example, JBL ) to their administrator and simply allow him to listen to music at work.

TATARSTAN LOCAL TORRENT TRACKER USER FULLY ACCEPTED

In the fall, I already talked about how the RAPO office in Tatarstan initiated criminal prosecution of a local resident for illegally distributing 10 torrent files in a local p2p service terabits.ru, through which netizens could get an unlicensed copy of films belonging to a number of companies from Hollywood hills.

All defense arguments (including the absence of evidence in the case file confirming that other users received copies of the works, substantiating the declared value of the works, duly certified powers of attorney from American film giants proving RAPO's right to represent their interests in Russia) were rejected the court of first instance, and Semenov himself was found guilty of committing a crime involving copyright infringement and sentenced to a fine of 40 thousand rubles.

Considering the sad statistics of acquittals in the country (approximately 0.8% of the total), no one expected that the Supreme Court of Tatarstan would carefully consider all the circumstances of the case and annul the court’s decision due to the absence of corpus delicti and fully justify Semenov.

Natalya Loseva, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan, explained to journalists that the investigating authorities could not prove that Semenov distributed counterfeit films on the Web, namely: no expertise had been carried out to establish exactly whether the corresponding work could be downloaded from the torrent.

While the full definition of the court has not yet appeared, one can only assume that, in the opinion of the appeals instance, it was the catalyst for the annulment of the decision, however, I believe that the general support from the community and the media also played its role. It is also not yet clear whether the prosecutor’s office of the Republic will file a cassation appeal to the court of cassation. If this happens within a year, then the war should not be considered over. However, in any case, this court decision is a huge victory in the next battle against RAPO, which had already ruined the lives of a large number of Russians. Let me remind you that a number of local residents are under investigation for similar charges, and the decision may have affected the termination of criminal prosecution against them, which, given RAPO’s ambitious plans to initiate more cases of this kind of network activity in torrents, is undoubtedly a good news for all users of p2p networks.

“CONTENT TAX” CONCEPT IS ALMOST WONDERFUL

Not a short time has passed since RSP and King of the Pigs offered their first implementation model of a global license in RuNet, which was criticized by all participants in the process of distributing content in the network: rightholders, information brokers and the users themselves. It would seem that even those who previously supported the wildest innovations in the field of copyright regulation in the digital age (including the Presidential Administration, the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, the Ministry of Communications and the Public Chamber) expressed their negative attitude to the proposed initiative.

The concept immediately after its appearance became widely known in the Russian Internet as a “content tax”. Many felt that this was such a joke on the part of Mr. Mikhalkov’s team, which should not even be seriously discussed. It seemed that the idea itself and the method of its implementation were doomed to failure. However, during these few months I came across different people actively lobbying for the content collection from each user. And a conversation with these people confirmed my assumptions that the RSP, which owns serious financial resources from the “tax on taxes”, incurred a lot of expenses for the services of PR managers, consultants and “supporters” in order to continue to insist on the adoption of a law legalizing public content collection from users through Internet providers. At the same time, lobbyists continue to lie to the last, that the proposed approach is a revolutionary way of legalizing pirated content on the web.

None of the provisions of the laws on criminal / administrative / civil liability and on restricting access to sites in connection with copyright infringement is proposed to be revised.

At the same time a number of other interesting details surfaced. For example, according to the Giprosvyaz study, the cost of implementing the concept of collecting the “content tax” to monitor users' Internet traffic is from 1 to 5 billion US dollars.

In mid-February, the Main Control Department issued a negative opinion on the draft law, but First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov postponed consideration of the issue until March 30, after which the official position on the proposed initiative would be announced.

IPA , PPR and RKS under the project “Time to change copyright” launched a wide campaign and petition against the proposed tax on the Internet.

However, in spite of the fact that only the lazy one did not comment on the concept proposed by the ESP, we have repeatedly seen how even the craziest proposals in the field of Internet regulation became a reality in record time. That is why it is now important to push in order to convey to the Government of the Russian Federation the position of the users themselves, website operators and information intermediaries on this issue. We ask you to support the campaign “against the tax on the Internet”, sign the petition and place banners on their resources until the end of March, so that the users of online services themselves can express their attitude to the proposed legislative creativity.

Undoubtedly, we need copyright reform , but not at all what the RSP and the Ministry of Culture offer us today, depriving us of the right to independently determine what content we should consume and whom we should encourage by paying for the created works. In addition, it seems erroneous to introduce a system with an opaque scheme for the final distribution of the author's remuneration, allowing for the enrichment of a narrow group of stakeholders hiding behind copyright protection, to the detriment of the interests of millions of Internet users.

THE MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATION SUPPORTED THE TRANSITION TO THE PUBLIC DOMAIN OF THE SOVIET FILM HERITAGE


Almost a year has passed since the PPR and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation made a joint bill on the transfer of the Soviet cultural heritage to the public domain , but so far there has not been a single hearing on the bill. Everyone has long been accustomed to, that deputies are not in a hurry when it comes to permissive laws, and show an incredible speed of decision-making when it comes to new prohibitive measures. At the same time, the Committee on Culture of the State Duma, headed by director Govorukhin, probably pursuing the interests of the “old brotherhood”, now in charge of the federal state unitary enterprises, the successors, sent his critical opinion to the said draft law.

In the fall of 2014, a member of the Human Rights Council and the founder of the Internet Users Association, Ivan Zassoursky, once again informed the first person that society needs to adopt such a law, because the practice of anti-piracy law has already begun to show that studios block people from accessing Soviet film films and blocking sites for infringement of the exclusive rights that FSUEs dispose of. Putin promised to deal with this, and as a result, he instructed the Ministry of Culture to formulate a position on the proposed initiative.
But can the pocket ministry of Medina, managed by the gray cardinals of the “creative elite”, agree to a voluntary rejection of copyright monopolies that allow the Soviet cinema to be milked throughout all these years?

Of course, the Ministry of Culture gave its conclusion that “the forced implementation of this idea would violate the provisions of Russian legislation and international conventions and entail a compulsory and unjustified infringement of the rights and interests of the authors, their heirs, other rightholders”.

It is noteworthy that when the Ministry of Culture once again accredited WIPO and RAO to unconditional copyright management and supported Mikhalkov with the “Internet tax” he was not at all embarrassed by the violation of Russia's international obligations by such actions. Now this problem seriously worries the office of Medina. But the cultural regulator does not specify who should present Russia with claims for the violation of the rights to Soviet works. At the same time, it looks very funny, fear of infringement of the rights of authors and their heirs in case of adoption of the law, since the authors themselves (composers, directors and screenwriters) did not have any rights according to the norms of the Soviet Civil Code, and therefore the heirs of these authors did not have them either. Exclusive rights to the films belonged to the film studios themselves, which could be understood in the economic model of the USSR, but it is extremely difficult to understand in the economic model of a “market economy”, when FSUEs, who are formally the legal successors of Soviet studios, but who have nothing to do with them, own these rights .

Nevertheless, today there was a very encouraging message that the draft law is ready to support the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of Russia. Thus, the camp of supporters of the transfer of the Soviet cultural heritage from under the legal regime of copyright to the public domain regime has been replenished with a fairly strong player who can influence the final decision of the authorities.

POWER OF PIRATES

Despite the vigorous anti-piracy activity on the part of copyright holders, legislators and law enforcers last year, Russia still remains in a special report 301 for 2014, which the US Trade Representative Office (USTR) annually prepares. At the same time, despite the expanded version of the anti-piracy law, which comes into force in the Russian Federation in May of this year, as well as a number of high-profile criminal cases against Internet users and the signing by the largest content companies (including VK) of an anti-piracy memorandum under the strict guidance of Roskomnadzor For Russia, nothing has changed in its legal status in the eyes of the American authorities. Therefore, Russia still remains in the number of countries with "priority monitoring of copyright compliance."

However, the deceitful position of the United States Trade Representative concerning the list of pirate countries this year was quite beautifully broken by the EFF’s American human rights activists, who informed the position of the entire US Internet community why the world should not repeat the mistakes of American copyright legislation. In addition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a response to the 301 USTR Special Report (in which we also participated). The EFF report breaks all the myths that countries on the “priority watch list” cannot ensure the protection of rights to intellectual property results, as well as reduce pirated content consumption.

Changes in the field of legal regulation of copyright in Russia are not visible only to the blind and deaf. For example, the administration of VKontakte made a number of changes to the work of the service: (a) signed an anti-piracy memorandum with the right holder; (b) cleans up entire lists of videos and music previously downloaded by the users themselves (c) removed the ability to search for music from mobile applications (c) removed the ability to listen to songs from mobile applications, leaving only the possibility of listening to a demo followed by buying in iTunes (d) completely deprived iOS users of the ability to listen to music through an application on demand from Apple.

However, all these steps did not give any results in order to whitewash his name in the eyes of the American copyright holders and get recognition as a legal service. Therefore, VC remains on the list of the most pirated Russian sites , along with the most popular torrent tracker Rutracker.org, the file sharing Rapidgator.net and the 4shared.com service.

Therefore, all attempts by Russian lobbyists from the copyright industry through tough legislative initiatives and harsh law enforcement to clear the digital space of Runet from pirated content did not bring any tangible results to change the international status of Russia in the field of copyright. According to the American agency, which claims to be the main steward of world trade, our country remains the largest pirate power. However, today a completely natural question arises: should we continue to play this game under the name “copyrights”, trying to prove to the United States that Russia is seriously concerned about the insufficient legal protection of the largest producers of content from the new world? Trends have changed ...