All news

Russian communications minister reports 30% hike in web-content purchases

MOSCOW, January 15 (Itar-Tass) - The number of Russians paying for the purchase of web-content increased by 30 percent by the end of 2013 following Russia’s introduction of a package of anti-piracy laws last summer, the minister of communications said on Wednesday.

Addressing a session of the parliament’s lower house, Russia’s Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov said the anti-piracy law “works in practice and yielded weighty results.”

“We saw that in the last months of last year alone the number of people paying for the legal content soared by 30 percent and it was a very important achievement,” the minister said, adding that Russia needs to bring the number of legal web-content buyers up to 30 million by 2018.

Russia’s anti-piracy law came into effect last August and it provides for blocking the Internet page suspected of hosting illegal content. Under the law, if a copyright holder has found an online movie or video, posted without the author’s permission, he may turn to the Russian state media watchdog, Roskomnadzor, with a request to restrict access to the content.

Roskomnadzor shall in turn determine the hosting provider within three days and send it a notice demanding the removal of illegally posted content. If the website owner refuses or fails to follow the request, the hosting provider must restrict access to the Internet resource within three days following the receipt of notification.

Intellectual property violations served for a long time as one of the major obstacles to Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). The country was granted membership in the organization less than two years ago.