MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin has condemned piracy on the Internet as "calamity for Russian culture", addressing the Duma committee on culture on Friday.

"Protection of the copyright, above all, in the national segment of the Internet, is a priority direction of the state politics in culture," the speaker said. "At issue is the entire sector of creative content which has been heavily stolen on the Internet irrespective of the copyright of its authors," the speaker said.

"A book market alone has been losing billions of rubles annually because of piracy; the share of such content is nearly 90%," Naryshkin said, citing experts. "I think that the situation is similar in other fields of the creative content; piracy is a real calamity for our culture."

"A reliable protection of the copyright is possible only under conditions of honest competition, rather than monopolism," Naryshkin said.

"A second anti-piracy bill, which regulates problems in book publishing, music, comes into force as of May 1. Obviously, we might find loopholes during practical use of the bill, which might be improved by making amendments to the bill, " the speaker said.