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Russia’s Rambler says amended anti-piracy law backs rights’ owner

The lawmakers are preparing amendments to the anti-piracy law, including a condition for blocking a Web site for two infringements of intellectual rights

MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. The widening of the Russian anti-piracy law will provide rights’ owners with tools to pressure Web sites’ owners, an official with Internet company Rambler&Co. said Friday.

“In case of adoption of the amendments, activities of almost all information intermediaries, furnishing third parties with an opportunity to place content on their web sites, may be terminated upon a request of rights’ owners,” the official said.

The lawmakers are preparing amendments to the anti-piracy law, including a condition for blocking a Web site for two infringements of intellectual rights. The law covers music, books and software. If the amendment is adopted, the law will cover all authors’ and neighboring rights, with the exception of pictures.

The same concerns the introduction of a pre-trail order of disputes. “It protects interests only of one party, the rights’ owner, and deprives other participants of their basic rights, including the one for court protection,” the spokesperson said.

Among the amendments there is an initiative to oblige a website owner to delete during 24 hours any content, rather than to limit access to it, upon an electronic request from a rights’ owner.

Stanislav Kozlovsky, executive director at non-commercial partnership Wikimedia RU, said that the expansion of the anti-piracy law on all types of content, excluding pictures, may result in court mistakes in tracking a real intellectual rights owner for disputable materials released in the Internet.

“The law names authors of works who call themselves such until the opposite is proved by court. The notions of the author and the rights’ owner are divided, as the latter can buy from the former rights to use the works. It makes the process of identifying the real owner at court more difficult,” Kozlovsky said.