A database of copyright infringing webpages and content in Russia is being established by the country’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor in a bid to tackle the chronical problem with piracy, Profile.ru reports.
The agency will then encourage internet companies in the country to speedily remove links to offending sites from their search engines while also deleting any listed material from their user-upload platforms, the report says.
The database is the result of Roskomnadzor-led talks between content owners and internet companies in Russia in recent months. Those talks were seemingly stepped up following a high-profile stand-off with Russian web giant Yandex back in August.
In that stand-off, Russian broadcaster Gazprom-Media secured an injunction that ordered Yandex to remove links to pirated copies of the media company’s content from its search engine. Roskomnadzor itself then ordered the web firm to likewise remove infringing content from its video upload site, threatening to instigate a web-block against Yandex.video if it failed to do so. For a time it looked like that web-block may indeed be instigated.
Yandex ultimately complied with the various demands. New talks then began between Russian media and internet companies resulting in a memorandum of co-operation being signed last week. Yandex is among the signatories, as is another Russian web company that has had run-ins with copyright owners in the past, social network vKontakte.
Roskomnadzor already has a database of copyright infringing websites that have been subject to a formal web-block. Internet service providers are obliged to connect to that database and ensure that they are indeed blocking any blocked sites. That obligation was then extended to search engines last year, which must delist blocked sites, something over which the internet regulator is now heading into a dispute with Google.
