ОАО “Sintez Records” has filed a lawsuit to the Arbitration Court of Tatarstan against Kazan television and radio broadcasting company TVT, which is the owner of the media portal http://media.hitv.ru/, claiming about nearly 2,500,000 Rb in compensation for the copyright violation. In the course of the hearing the amount of the claim went up to 12 mln Rb. The case was about making available on the media portal for the portal users – TVT subscribers of 243 songs by rock band “Time Mashine”.
The Arbitration Court has rejected the case and explained the reasons behind its decision. The website of the media-portal displays Terms and Conditions for the use of the site which state that that the resource is a file exchange one and that the administration can not be held responsible for the content placed therein. At the same time, the rights holders were invited to inform on the violation of their rights by e-mail and the administration would review each complaint. OAO “Sintez Records” did not go in for it but filed a lawsuit. Having received copies of statement of the claim the administrator of the resource removed all the disputable compositions from the media portal.
At the same time, the court has admitted that the owner of the media portal had no technical capacity to determine precisely which TVT subscribers placed those compositions and thus violated the rights of OAO “Sintez Records”, because it failed to receive from the rights holder a written complaint and could not promptly react and identify the trespasser.
This example vividly demonstrates the need to adopt a law “On the Internet” which is being drafted by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications. This law represents amendments to the laws: “On Mass Media”, “On Communication”, “On Information”, “On Protection of the Consumers” and to the Civil Code and On Administrative Violations Code. The draft law came to the fore at the RIW-2010 at the round table “Legality and Lawmaking in the Internet: the role of the Internet business community”.
Mr. Maxim Bobin, member of the ad-hoc group on legal issues of the CC and vice-president of Mail.ru, partook in the development of the draft law. At the round table he amplified the content of the draft law. The draft law envisages indemnifying Internet companies for the pirate content placed by users where Internet companies comply with several conditions: for example, provide the rights holders with a chance to file a complaint against illegal content placement i.e. apply a system of notifications and promptly react to rights holders’ complaints. Pursuant to the draft, on the receipt of such a complaint, the line operator, hosting- or service provider must block access to the illegal content within three days. This blockage is to last for a month, to be subsequently either lifted, or prolonged by as per the court verdict. International practices were used in the development of this draft law.
The current Russian practice coincides with what is envisaged in the draft law “On the Internet” – in fact, this document provides a legal status to the existing business practice mode. Practically all service providers and line operators react to the complaints of rights holders in this way and block the users’ access to disputable content. Moreover, it is very rarely noted in the international practice that control over legitimacy of the content is mandated to portals and services, as it is technically unfeasible. That’s exactly why in most countries illegal music and video content is eliminated on receipt of notification from the rights holder.
