An extended meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, dedicated to the problems of deepfakes, domain names and information intermediaries, was held on February 15. The meeting was co-organized by IP CLUB, and its President and Committee Chairman Marina Rozhkova moderated the discussion. She noted that this is the first meeting of the legal affairs committee with the new composition: “We are very pleased that the committee now includes not only lawyers, but also specialists in technical issues.”
Vice-President of IP CLUB and Associate Professor of Moscow State Law Academy named after Kutafin Alexandra Yorsh spoke about the legal regulation of deepfakes. She noted that 4000 unique deepfakes have been discovered on the Runet, and according to forecasts, in 2024 their number will increase to 4500. The main channels for the distribution of deepfakes were YouTube, TikTok, Instagram* and Facebook* (*Meta, the company that owns these social networks, is recognized as an “extremist organization” and its activities are prohibited in Russia).
Legal Adviser of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Ekaterina Evteeva made a report with an overview of judicial practice in the field of domain names. She noted that recently it has become more difficult for copyright holders to prove violation of exclusive rights, and the most effective protection is for well-known trademarks. However, a conscientious administrator has a chance to defend the domain in a dispute with the trademark owner. “It’s interesting that if a domain is not actually used, then the copyright holder has virtually no chance of suing it,” Ekaterina Evteeva said.
Co-founder and CEO of the Patrikeev and Partners service for legal support of startups and e-commerce projects, Pavel Patrikeev, spoke about who the information intermediary is, as well as about the problems of law enforcement in this area. He noted that an information intermediary transmitting material in an information and telecommunications network is not responsible for violations if three conditions are simultaneously met: he is not the initiator of the transfer and does not determine the recipient of the information, does not change the specified material when providing communication services (except for technological changes for transfer purposes) and did not know and could not know that the use of the results of this intellectual activity is unlawful. Pavel Patrikeev also spoke about the problems of law enforcement in this area, in particular, that new formats of information intermediaries are constantly emerging, and the courts do not have enough qualifications in this area.
Also the discussion was addressed by Deputy Director for Legal Affairs of the Coordination Center Sergei Kopylov and Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev.
The recording of the extended meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee dedicated to the problems of deepfakes, domain names and information intermediaries can be found via the link.
