Russia to make social media liable for piracy

Russia to make social media liable for piracy

10 April 2017

News Piracy

Due to the extreme amount of piracy that is being shared through the Internet, the Russian Ministry of Culture has proposed a bill to make social media liable for the infringing content shared through their platforms.

Before the rise of social media, people would refer to peer-to-peer sites to access different media. Songs would be downloaded individually from Limewire and Kazaa, using their built-in search bar and downloading directly in the program. Soon, streaming sites and direct downloads displaced these sites and moments later, torrents joined the mix with The Pirate Bay and Kick-Ass Torrents.

But now, as Facebook and Twitter and other socializing sites take more and more hold of people’s personal lives, piracy has found new niche. A lot of people now access copyrighted content through social media, states the Ministry of Culture.

As a matter of fact, vKontakte (or Russian Facebook) is used to share full movies, entire TV shows, music albums and even discographies. Although these sites claim to comply with Russia’s copyright law with their licensing deals and software that recognizes these contents, they are still the most popular place to find pirated content.

This is why the Ministry of Culture seeks to make social media liable for the content posted on their site. By removing their intermediary status, this would persuade the sites to be stricter against the practice. The Ministry has already drafted the bill and it has been approved by their board. Now, it will be presented for public comment.

The bill states that on making social media liable for the content, they should take into consideration if the platform should have known of the content being posted, whether the site is taking preventive measure, whether it takes active measure to delete this content, and whether they made any profit from this content.

The Ministry states that the technology does exist for social media to filter, take down and prevent infringing content on their sites. It’s expensive, they claim, but it’s necessary. In the end, by making social media liable for the content, we must make sure that accurate content protection be offered.

3ANTS’ content protection softwares are custom made and specialized to attack infringing content while protecting public domain and freedom of speech.


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3ANTS is a content protection company that specializes in fighting the threat of piracy with innovative technology and a qualified team of experts on piracy. Specialized software and custom-made processes offer the best protection on the market. If you want to know more about our services, please contact us.

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