Copyrights holders prepare for filing a process in the Moscow City Court.
Copyright Protection on the Internet Association (CPIA) will submit a claim to the Moscow City Court against the Russian search engine Yandex in two weeks.
As Maxim Riabyko, the General Director of CPIA, said to Gazeta.Ru, the reason for the proceedings beginning is that the human rights activists want to ban the issue via search a links to Rutracker.org which received a lifetime lock-up. CPIA believes that links to content on pirate resources can already be regarded as a law infringement.
The users can easily find using Yandex any materials on sites even if these sites were permanently blocked.
Previously, the association tried to convince Yandex to voluntarily remove such a links, but now it will be solved via the court. Copyrights holders want to prove that a search issue is the same information as a torrent file.
“We want to set a precedent, and we expect that the court will confirm the right of the copyright holder who has achieved block the site to require blocking links from the search systems to this site without obtaining an additional judgment. Also we would like to prove that the legislation already contains the necessary provisions according to which Yandex is obliged to respond to the requirements of extrajudicial legal owner” – says Riabyko.
Also Maxim Riabyko noted that other well-known search engine – Google – has gone towards the copyright owners. It immediately removes unlicensed content at the request of the copyright holder. Google also notifies the site owner because he may not agree with such actions. Popular Russian social network VKontakte also removes links to the unlicensed materials and blocks the communities or the individual users who posted them. But Yandex even does not have a special e-mail for such complaints of copyright holders, while under the Russian Federation law “On Protection of Information” such a rule is mandatory.
If CIPA wins in court, copyright owners will be able to apply to Yandex with the requirements to remove an unlicensed content before the closure of pirate sites.
Now searching and other indirect links make a significant traffic for piracy resources which have been blocked by a court decision. Any material or links to them are not deleted even after permanent resource lock-up.
As a reminder, in late July the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications has provided information regarding attendance of Rutracker.org that was permanently locked-up. The Russian ministry declared that the attendance of the country’s largest pirate resource decreased by 71% since January. However, the RuTracker.org administration stated that site audience decreased by 40-50 % in fact but this has not affected the file-sharing activity in general.
The lawyers questioned by the publishers give a different prognosis for the outcome of the process against Yandex. The lawyer Oleg Nikulenko from “EkKorp-protection” bar assosiation believes that in this situation the law “On information, information technologies and information protection” infringement has a place. And Vyacheslav Losev, the managing partner of “Losev and Partners”, said that the Russian search engine did not violate the laws of Russia, because there is no law that would prohibit to give links to locked-up sites in search results. Diana Maklozian, the Head of the legal department in “Heads Consulting”, noted that the Ministry of Communications has developed an amendments obliging search engines to remove links to resources locked-up by decision of the Moscow City Court. But Yandex does not bear any responsibility, Maklozian said, as they have not approved yet.
