Russia: Drafted legislation includes the news in copyright protection

Posted by Christie Silk on July 22, 2009 at 1:38 PM

The Russian Communications and Press Ministry has drafted legislation that will extend copyright protection to include the news, thus giving news agencies greater abilities to claim plagiarism of their information property. If the bill passes into legislation, media bodies using content without sufficiently citing the source, will do so at the risk of being fined or having publications confiscated, the Moscow Times reports.

Ultimately, the measures would create a legal framework for the commercialisation of information by news agencies, explains Vadim Uskov, a copyright lawyer. The current problem is that information is not legally considered as "an object of buying and selling" thus a present "there is a real market, but there is no law to regulate it".

The draft legislation is the result of the pressure put on the Communications and Press Minister, Alexander Zharov by leading publishers, such as Interfax and RIA-Novosti, concerned by the commercial use of their work by other, particular the Internet, media outlets. Annoyance with this practice has been registered for a considerable amount of time, yet the current economic climate has apparently served to intensify complaints. The publishers have registered satisfication with the current progress of the bill.

The bill, which will be put forward to the State Duma when it reconvenes in Autumn, is still however, relatively vague. It does not mention, for instance, which state department would be responsible for the levying of the fines, nor does it clarify the situation in which a confiscation could be made.

The haziness of the bill has been met with some concern by some lawyers and smaller media outlets. There are worries that the vagueness of details could cause confusion and exploitation at the detriment of smaller media bodies. Online newspaper, the Moscow Post, is currently fielding off complaints made by RIA-Novosti to the Federal Mass Media Inspection Service over an alleged recurring plagiarist. The passing of this law could facilitate Novosti's complaint making into legal and therfore punishable issue. The Post's editor is firmly against the principle of the bill, describing it as "an opportunity to punish a rival media outlet".

The bill is certainly a child of a complicated and controversial global situation. As the proliferation of news platforms fuel the abundance of digital and printed information, it is ever more difficult to correctly identify its genuine source. The discontented voice of publications such as the Post raised in reaction to this incident may show, moreover, that the concept of information "ownership" may have developed too far beyond cut-glass classifications of who owns what. Nevertheless, it will be interesting see if the legal regulation of news information does serve to straighten out the situation.

Source: The Moscow Times