Internet companies opposed the bill on blocking mirrors

The Russian Association of Electronic Communications turned to the State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin with criticism of the proposals of the Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky to block the sites with pirate copies of Russian films, Vedomosti reports . Amendments can be made to the second reading of the bill on blocking the mirrors of prohibited sites.

"The extrajudicial order is dangerous by the fact that the decision is made by the administrative body, which, unlike the court, is not independent. Also, the site owner does not participate in the process: he cannot realize his constitutional right to defense," the RAEK letter said.

If the amendments of the Ministry of Culture are supported, then other market participants, referring to the constitutional principle of equality of all before the law, may also require the introduction of extrajudicial procedures to protect their rights, the authors of the letter noted. In addition, the Medinsky initiative creates a dangerous precedent, since the extrajudicial order is proposed to apply to economic disputes, and not to protect human rights and freedoms or security.

The RAEC includes more than 100 Internet companies such as Mail.ru Group, Google, Ebay, Ozon, Rambler & Co, RBC, Microsoft and others.

On March 30, Kommersant reported that, on the initiative of the Medinsky, the Ministry of Culture is preparing amendments to accelerated blocking sites with illegal copies of Russian films. It is proposed to give the agency the right to contact Roskomnadzor with a request to limit access to the resource at the request of the copyright holder. This, according to the ministry, will reduce the lock period to two days. Within 10 days, the site may challenge the decision of Roskomnadzor. The interlocutor of the publication in the Ministry of Culture noted that the initiative concerns exclusively Russian films: the state is trying to protect its investments in this way.

In February last year, the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharov, said that the department was preparing a bill on the blocking of mirrors. “It is fundamentally important to block not only the main resource, but also its mirrors. But in our legislation the concept of“ mirror ”does not exist. The fact is that often, creating a mirror, the owner of the resource changes its front page, that is, the exact copy does not work,” said Zharov.

On March 17, the State Duma adopted in the first reading a bill on blocking the mirrors of sites prohibited for the illegal distribution of audiovisual works. The document introduces the concept of "derivative site on the Internet", that is, mirrors, and also determines the procedure for restricting access to such sites on the basis of copyright holders in the Moscow City Court and subsequent court orders. Search systems will be obliged to remove from the search results for links to mirrors, access to which is limited.

The chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Leonid Levin emphasized that the bill is aimed at protecting copyrights on the Internet. "The pirates quite quickly created the" mirrors "of those sites that were blocked and put a forwarding on them," Levin noted. As a result, the opportunity to download pirate content was preserved.

The deputy head of the Ministry of Communications Alexei Volin said that his department was supporting the bill.

During the discussion, Vice Speaker Irina Yarovaya expressed bewilderment why the ministry does not offer "a similar approach to blocking mirror sites for prohibited content." “Because the biggest problem is that after a fair decision, Roskomnadzor is created analogue in a minute,” Yarovaya stated.

“We, I think, will consider this within another bill or by the second reading, we will see if this norm can be expanded,” Volin promised.