Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs considers that it is necessary to fight with Internet pirates in the Russian Federation through “white lists”
This is a registry of websites and services licensed by rightholders
Technological platform for protecting rightholders against pirates on the Internet should be based on the principle of so-called “white lists” – a registry of websites and services licensed by rightholders. Such an opinion expressed Andrey Krichevsky, Chairman of the Committee on Intellectual Property of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) on Tuesday at a round table in TASS.
Earlier, Vadim Subbotin, Deputy Head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (‘Roskomnadzor’), said that after the entry into force of the Anti-Piracy Memorandum in November 2018, around 1.4 million links to pirated content were removed in RuNet, during the year. According to him, in the development of the concept of the memorandum and in the wake of its successful testing, a draft federal law has been made and is currently being prepared for introduction into parliament.
“Everything that lies in the basis of the Anti-Piracy Memorandum is good as the first step, but, of course, this is not a solution. Making law on the basis of this Memorandum is premature, we need a different mechanism,” said Krichevsky. He noted that further work is needed to improve legislation in the sphere of counteracting piracy.
“Even the brutal and very effective actions of Roskomnadzor are not enough, we need a technological system, since piracy is a technological business, and only another high-tech business model can beat it,” he said. – Work is underway on such a solution – this is IPChain network based on blockchain a technology, a registry has already been created that minimizes the role of intermediaries and guarantees the immutability of information. This makes it possible to introduce so-called “white lists”.
At present, counteracting pirates in Russia is carried out on the basis of “black lists”, which means that if there is a claim from a rightholder the pirated links are excluded from the search results, the “white registry”, according to Krichevsky, is a much more effective mechanism. Krichevsky also said that in 2019, for the first time, the revenues of pirates decreased significantly. If in 2018 they amounted to $87 million, in 2019 this figure dropped to $64 million.
For his part, Francis Gurry, CEO at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), speaking at the round table, said that Russia and WIPO had also begun to develop a system that “would not allow pirated sites to benefit from advertising.” The solution, he said, will be a system of warnings that will immediately notify providers of the appearance of pirated sites on the network. Francis Gurry also said that at the upcoming meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he intends to discuss Russia’s role in the world in the context of intellectual property protection. “Of course, I will emphasize the wide cooperation that we have with Russia, we will discuss how to improve it, as well as opportunities for Russia to become a world leader in the protection of intellectual property,” he said.
The Proposal of the Ministry of Culture
The Ministry of Culture proposes to change the principle of copyright protection in Russia. “The Ministry of Culture proposes to change the principle of copyright protection, which exists in current legislation. We believe that it is necessary to take measures to block illegal content immediately upon the copyright holder claim, but the copyright holder should not apply to court but rather the person who posted the copyright holder’s content on its site if this person does not agree with such blocking”, said Natalya Romashova, Director of the Regulatory Department of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.
A round table was held at TASS on the issue of protecting intellectual property and digital content on the Internet.
Experts discussed the main trends in the development of the field of intellectual property in the digital environment, the preservation of authorship on the Internet and the improvement of anti-piracy legislation. Representatives of Rospatent, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (‘Roskomnadzor’), the Ministry of Culture, Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), and Russian Organization for Intellectual Property (VOIS) participated.
