russia_russia 29/01/2014 13:08 Page 5
CONTENT FOCUS
Content partnership addresses
online piracy
ighlighting proactive antipiracy measures ongoing in
Ukraine, Russia, and other
Eastern countries, Clear Sky – formed
in July 2013 – is spearheading a
campaign aiming to develop a global
market that is mutually beneficial for
rights holders, users and online
businesses alike.
Committed to domestic anti-piracy in the
Ukraine, the multi group partnership believes
the most effective way to suffocate global
online piracy is to coordinate international
efforts in line with domestic initiatives,
beginning with carrying out a raft of objective,
pan-international reviews to create watertight
legislation and transparent practices.
Participants aired their opinions favouring
public regulation of issues associated with
copyright and legal/illegal content which are
to be covered in the 'On on-line protection of
copyrights and related rights' legislation. The
State Service of Intellectual Property (SSIP)
has a draft law on the table with the aim of
establishing a pre-trial procedure to fight
copyright infringements online. The draft law
stipulates a possibility for a copyright owner to
address a relevant complaint to an infringer so
that the content in question be removed within
two working days upon receipt. In the event of
no response by the infringer, the content shall
by promptly blocked by the provider until the
issue has been settled in court. Such an
approach was approved by the participants as
balanced and meeting the goal of
establishing fair and transparent
rules.
Tatiana Smirnova, director of
legal affairs, 1+1, pointed out that no
Clear Sky member company has ever
aimed at “breakinging the record for
the number of trial hearings” and
accordingly “has never been engaged
in numerous litigations but it is the
last instrument we resort to, only if
there is no other way to settle the
issue. So, if asked about the
percentage of cases won I can
answer immediately: all the cases
filed. But they have been few. Because it is not
what we are aiming at.”
Valentin Koval, head of M1 and M2, shared
his experience in fighting piracy on the music
scene. “Channel M1 rejects requests of concert
organisers whose posters carry logos of
resources suspected of delivering illegal
content,” he declared, adding that a number of
publishing and recording companies
H
The Clear Sky content
partnership - an initiative
of four major media
groups of Ukraine – met
in late 2013 to summarise
the results of its
operations, and discuss
copyright protection
issues.
representing world majors were ready to join
the antipiracy movement.
The market self-regulation requires, among
other things, wide spread cooperation between
copyright holders operating on Ukraine’s
market. The participants in the conference
agreed that players in the video content
market take a positive attitude to the Clear Sky
initiative and are ready to give backing to it.
Irina Andryushchenko, Director for
Development, StarLightMedia, stated that 48
sites have already joined the Clear Sky
Partnership pointing out that legal inventory
available at the platforms of the initiative
partners, including video nets Megogo and
You Tube, are quite sufficient to place an
advertising campaign to meet any kind of
marketing purposes. “Maximum reach might
be achieved subject to required frequency and
optimal market prices without using platforms
with illegal content.” According to
Andryushchenko, the total legal inventory
available on the groups’ platforms and video
nets would amount to nearly 500m views
which accounts for 50% of Ukraine’s legal
content (net of YouTube). The monetised
online viewing ratio (licensed content versus
pirated content) is forecast to reach 85% to
15% by 2018.
Yuriy Khazanov, director for partnership
programmes for Eastern Europe for YouTube
spoke on global experience in monitoring the
pirated content in the net. YouTube uses the
Content ID technology. The identified
copyright holder is supposed to decide on
whether to block access to the content or get
proceeds from it. According to Khazanov, his
company follows the US Digital Millennium
Copyright Act enabling each copyright owner
to fill in a special form which would lead to
removal of the product that has been illegally
placed by a user.
Pavel Turinin, chief official for internet
development, Star Media, shared his
experience in fighting piracy in Russia. “We do
collect all information and file it to court only
if a relevant resource refuses to remove the
content. However, we have been faced with a
number of challenges associated with the
search for site owners. Firstly when filing the
documents we need a copyright to be notarised
and that is not cheap. Secondly, identifying
resource owners is no easy thing
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