The United States may have made "In contact" and "Classmates" in the "pirate" list

The International Union of Intellectual Property (IIPA) recommended that the US Trade Mission re-include Russia in the list of countries in which intellectual property rights are actively violated. In the first places on the so-called “301 list”, Russia ended up with China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Chile. Despite the fact that, by joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), Russia has pledged to protect the rights of authors and copyright holders, online piracy remains a serious problem in this country.

Right now, the Russian government is deciding whether to introduce an author's fee in the country, the document says. He assumes that operators will charge a fixed monthly fee from users, and then pay deductions to rightholders (this is the idea of ​​the Russian Union of Rights Holders, whose board is headed by Nikita Mikhalkov. - Vedomosti). The US trade mission and IIPA warn the Russian authorities against the introduction of this measure: they believe that this will destroy the natural competition in this market.

The authors of the document recommend the Russian government to abandon the idea of ​​copyright tax and focus on the legal protection of intellectual property. In particular, they advise taking effective measures against Internet pirates - unlicensed streaming music services, sites with pirated games, sites with cyber-lovers, torrent tracker, etc.

The IIPA recommended the inclusion of the Vkontakte social network in the list, calling it the largest distributor of pirated music, films and TV shows. “In contact,” on 100% owned by the Mail.ru Group, appears on this list with 2012. “In contact” is specifically created so that its users can upload content to it, the document says. The social network is available in many languages, including English. In addition, there are many third-party applications that allow you to listen and watch pirated content in "In Contact".

“In contact” removes pirated content at the request of the copyright holders, the authors of the document say. But this is not enough to combat piracy, they say. The Odnoklassniki social network also has a service of unlicensed music, the document says.

Also, the US authorities intend to include a number of large torrent trackers, such as rutracker.org, rutor.org, torrent-games.net, rapidator.net, and others, in the “301 list”.

Source - Vedomosti