Russia Prosecuting Online Infringement. For the WTO?

The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for those convicted of copyright infringement to forfeit up to 18 months of their wages, among other possible punishments including jail time or work-relief.  (Art. 146.) 

Rumor has it that though Russia has these laws on her books, their enforcement has been less ideal.  According to an AFP story on Yahoo! News, Russia is working to change that.  The proposed motive: entry into the WTO.

The Recent Enforcement

Basic story-line, young man uploads music tracks to a social networking site without permission from the copyright owner.  Other users download the songs.  In this case, the Russian music tracks uploaded by the young man were downloaded over 200,000 times by other users.  The young man was caught and prosecution charges filed.

High-profile raids to confiscate infringing goods have also increased in the move to step-up enforcement.

The WTO Relationship

According to the AFP story, Russia is increasing its copyright enforcement in order to finally join the WTO, a process it began in 1993.  The article states, “Russia's inability to implement any meaningful form of copyright protection has been one of the main issues raised by the United States during the latest rounds of two sides' World Trade Organization negotiations.”

Some other research sheds some doubt on this reasoning.  Russian WTO negotiations with IP-promoting Western governments have been going well recently.  The EU backed Russia for WTO admittance late last year and negotiations with the US have been progressing with the support of President Obama.  (See here, here and here.)  And while there is some discussion of intellectual property enforcement being a problem, the major barriers remaining are more likely tariffs.

This is not to say that increased enforcement will not help Russia in its bid for the WTO, but merely to suggest that it is not quite as an important factor as the AFP story suggests.  At the very least, such enforcement should help get Russia removed from the Priority Watchlist in the infamous Special 301 Report (pdf).

Proposals from the IPO -- but will the Minister tweet?

From the Intellectual Property Office in the United Kingdom comes this press release concerning proposed penalties for online infringement.

"Tougher penalties for online Copyright Infringement proposed as part of Digital Britain package

Following the publication of the Digital Britain Report, the Intellectual Property Office has outlined proposals to improve copyright licensing and increase financial penalties for online infringers.

They include:

• Legislative changes to license orphan works. Legislation will effectively deal with this issue in order to remove the infringement risk that currently prevents collecting societies licensing orphan works (arising as they do not have a mandate from the rights holder). [Curious way to begin the substantive bit of a press release with "tougher penalties" in its title] This will benefit cultural organisations by allowing them access to currently unusable material [which some have been accessing anyway because the risk is small or because they didn't know there was one]. It will also enable public access to a great number of historical works that are currently locked up [this seems to confuse access to use with access to view -- these are quite different issues].

• New powers for government to authorise collecting societies to set up extended licensing schemes. This will allow certain collecting societies to act for a group of rights holders even if they are not all members of the society, unless a specific rights holder has opted out of the scheme [will this result in the authorisation of just one society per right?].

• Underpinning the operation of collecting societies. As collecting societies reach out to new groups of customers, we need to underpin their operations with a statutory backed framework [underpinning: does that mean 'supporting' or 'pinning down'?].

• Consultation on improving operations of collecting societies. Government would not make recommendations to utilise the above powers without formal public consultation with stakeholders and other interested parties [the key word is "improving": it can mean different things when viewed from the perspectives of rights owners, users of works and consumers].

• Matched penalties for online and physical IP infringement. This proposal will introduce a statutory maximum penalty of £50,000 for all IP offences [the pedant asks: "for all IP offences" or "for each IP offence"?].

Commenting on new proposals, David Lammy, Minister of State for Intellectual Property said: "We must have the tools in place to tackle serious and organised IP crime. The proposed £50,000 maximum penalty for online and physical infringement sends a clear message to IP criminals. In this online age, IP infringement warrants a serious response. It needs to be stamped out- regardless of whether the offence is online or offline."

He added "In order to modernise and streamline the existing copyright system, I’m proposing a number of changes to the way collecting societies can operate.
I want to see greater development to ensure that our orphan works such as those great cultural works amassed in the BBC and the British Library are accessible to those who wish to benefit from them.

We should underpin the operation of collecting societies so that customers receive similar services and safeguards they would expect when dealing with a quality utility company."

I've always wondered what the purpose of adding quotes like this is, when they don't add any substance to the press release. Still, the Minister has kindly made himself available this Thursday evening at a reception. I hope to ask him for clarification of these proposals, as well as the really pressing question: why, when he has a presence on Twitter, does he never tweet on intellectual property issues -- even when prompted by me to do so?