Kommersant reported that the Ministry of Digital Development plans to allow Russian companies to illegally use foreign software

The Ministry of Digital Development is preparing a bill that will allow Russian companies to illegally use the software of foreign companies that have left Russia due to sanctions. This was reported by Kommersant with reference to a letter from the director of the IT industry development department Dmitry Nikitin to the organization “Public Consumer Initiative”.

The publication writes that at one of the webinars on December 28, the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, Maksut Shadayev, also said that businesses should be given the opportunity to use software created by foreign companies that left the Russian market after February 24.

“It is not the business’s fault that the developer left the country and licenses cannot be renewed. We must create a separate mechanism for bona fide users,” Kommersant quotes the minister as saying.

According to the publication, the essence of this mechanism is that Russian companies will be able to transfer payments for the use of foreign software to special accounts upon demand of the copyright holders. In addition, the initiative provides for “compulsory licensing” of such software and decriminalization of its use.

In August, State Duma deputy from A Just Russia, Dmitry Kuznetsov, already introduced a bill on compulsory licensing of copyright and related rights of those companies that left the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine. However, as wrote in October, then the Ministry of Digital Development considered Kuznetsov’s project unfinished. Kommersant

The publication reports that there is still no consensus on the initiative: some representatives of the IT industry believe that this will slow down import substitution, while others believe that it will help maintain the functionality of critical IT systems.

At the beginning of March, Oracle suspended the provision of services in Russia. Her example was soon followed by other software developers - Microsoft , Adobe , SAP . the introduction and expansion of the use of software created by Russian developers . also hinder Sanctions