Seriously, new Russian law litterally forbids users downloading Russian movies (only English movies allowed to download now)

To some, incredibly, Russia has become a human rights leader.

The Bad Guy Is Really Hollywood

The fact is, technological innovation and wealth creation has been thwarted for decades in America and around the world by creeping copyright extension laws spearheaded in the US.

Russia, building on the incredible wave of global goodwill post-Snowden, can strike another incredible blow for freedom by being the first country to take on copyright pirate Hollywood and NSA-collaborator Microsoft by introducing copyright laws that are consistent with what Thomas Jefferson argued was an appropriate copyright term: 14 years with a 14 year extension.

The Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and Leningradskaya Oblast, Russia, ordered few times less damages – about US$ 1,600 per each of 11 songs – for which the rights had been claimed as infringed by making available without authorisation on Russia’s largest social network, vKontakte.

And whereas it is likely no one can easily recollect the US figures, the decision by the Russian court was touted in Russian press headlines as the second ‘landmark’ ruling in support of right holders and hailed by foreign representatives of recording industry.

In the context of Russia’s recent WTO accession, during the pre-accession negotiations it was mandated that Russia undertake reforms “providing for criminal prosecution and penalties under the Criminal Code for aiding in copyright infringement on the Internet, including through circumvention of technological protection measures.” In particular, the members of the Working Party on Russian Accession stated that

“Piracy on the Internet was a serious and growing concern, as right owners had documented the operation of numerous websites based in the Russian Federation that offered pirated material. Members noted that with regard to internet piracy, there has been inadequate enforcement activity in the face of increasing online piracy” (§1337 of the Report of the WTO Working Party on the Accession of the Russian Federation).

Does the NEW LAW actually works?

The leader web-sites distributing the pirate content on the Russian Internet before this law was: rutor, turbofilm, ivi.ru, rutracker & many others. Now in case if the web-site refuses from removing the content infridging the copyright law, IP address will be publicly blocked everywhere throughout Russian Internet Service Providers. How does it affects people locally?

Very positively! Now you can't find movies with Russian translation on the torrents and other web-sites where users got used to download those things. That's now means for many of Russians that they will have to learn English if they want to enjoy their pirate content. New copyright law aren't blocking the IP addresses of multitudinous torrent trackers around the world - e.g. thepiratebay.se is still available to Russian masses. I suppose this will lead Russian people to download more English movies, so now its an awesome time for people: time when all of the Russian users gonna be watching English movies with subtitles - many of them will learn English, isn't that an awesome law?