Russia’s media and communications watchdog Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) has permanently blocked 234 digital piracy websites, according to Alexander Zharov, head of the body.

Zharov declared that the fight against digital piracy is successful. According to Zharov, the Moscow City Court blocked 3,700 websites containing stolen content with 2,500 being unblocked after deletion of materials in question.  total, 234 of the websites were blocked permanently, including online cinemas and torrent-trackers.

Zharov noted that the law on blocking of mirror websites comes into force on October 1^st 2017. President Vladimir Putin signed the law on July 3^rd. It was drafted based on examination of practice of indefinitely blocking websites which repeatedly and illegally distributed information containing objects of copyright and (or) related rights, or information required for procurement thereof with the use of data telecommunications networks. The examination has revealed some deficiencies including inapplicability of prompt measures regarding automatically-created ‘mirrors’ of the blocked websites.

The law introduces the term ‘derived Internet site’ (mirror website) into Russian legislation and prescribes the procedure of access restriction to such webpages on grounds of rights holders’ reference to the Moscow City Court. The law also obliges search systems providers to delete information on such websites from the search results.

Other posts by Colin Mann:

1. Analysis: SVoDs drive $220bn content spend
2. A TikToking clock heading towards regeneration – or not?
3. European pay-radio: Getting ready

Categories: Articles, Business, Content, OTT, OTT, Piracy, Policy, Regulation, Rights