Russia's War on Piracy/Malicious Software

tmk writes "Russian minister Leonid Reiman has announced new legislation to fight software piracy. According to official information the share of pirated software in the Russian Federation decreased in the last years from 90 to 60 percent. Reiman dismissed as a myth the impression that many viruses originate in his country: 'Viruses are written all over the world. Russia is waging a consistent and successful war on malicious software.' Reiman calls for an international organization to fight Internet crime. Last year Russia agreed to take down Allofmp3 after the United States intervened."

Comments

Copyright and fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

Are natural partners. Expect the USA, China and Russia to embrace draconian copyright law enforcement as an _excuse_ to monitor and control all transmission of information with their borders. All copyrightists are scum.

Re:Copyright and fascism

[teh kurisu]

The US is just defending their interests abroad. They are the largest exporter of copyrighted material in the world, and large-scale copyright infringement abroad can have an effect on American jobs.

All copyrightists are scum.

By that logic, people who use the GPL are scum, since it is copyright law that prevents non-GPL derivatives.

Re:Copyright and fascism

[Seumas]

We already embrace draconian copyright law and we already monitor all transmissions (it's called echelon or whatever they're calling it these days).

And for people who are going to say "hey, the RIAA/MPAA/BSA/US Government are only protecting our interests abroad!"... um... no. They are only protecting corporate interests abroad and doing so by manipulating and demanding how other nations will behave.

This is a case of American corporations not liking the laws other nations have within their own borders. The reason we want to change their laws and force them to abide by our broken copyright systems is the same reason we want them to become democracies and the same reason that we allow corporations to do business in countries that are a risk to our nation by threat of military actions, spying and have terribly humanitarian records. That reason being that corporations have saturated existing markets. Everyone who is going to by a Justin Timberlake CD in America, Austrlia and the United Kingdom already has done so. To continue expanding their corporations, they need to expand into new markets.

Helping bring other countries into competition with us at the expense of our own nation and citizens will eventually level them off to a point where they can all afford to buy our CDs and DVDs and videogames, as long as their legal systems and copyright systems (which we will force them to devise and comply with to our liking). Meanwhile, the average person in America and the UK can have their lifestyles seriously reduced in quality before they will no longer be capable or willing to buy content from these corporations.

I can't wait

[TubeSteak]

Russia agreed to shut down Allofmp3
"The government will be expected to begin complying by June 1, 2007."

They only agreed to it is so they could get into the WTO.
We'll see how strong their resolve is & how quickly Allofmp3 returns.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding intellectual property, the Soviet Russia joke is (unfortunately) more accurate when reversed :

e.g. : In Soviet Russia, you own your software, in America your software owns you.

Stop the slanting

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it what it is, "Data duplication." Or perhaps even "copyright infringement."

Stop calling it "piracy." This nomenclature implies a very debatable moral judgment. Since it is quite obvious that data duplication does not include rape or murder, it is a very ill-fitting term to begin with.

Just stop using it.

Re:Stop the slanting

[M. Baranczak]

OK, fine. You're not a "pirate". You're a "data duplicator". And the RIAA still wants to sue your ass.

Re:Eye witness report.

[rumith]

It is connected if you engage your brain a little, little troll. The piracy-fighting hype [among which was the physics faculty wide order to remove all the pirated software from faculty computers before March, 31th] was one of the reasons the migration was started in the first place. So I brought this in to show that yes, the piracy rate is decreasing, but not quite the way Microsoft and BSA would like it to.

Re:Imperialism

[westlake]

Why else would a country enact laws against the interests of both country's population and its future economic power?

To keep your domestic cultural product -- your cultural heritage -- from being utterly extinquished by cheap foreign imports?

Copy Wrong: Internet Piracy and Dickens and Melville

To help build and protect an export market?

How much do you suppose "James Bond" and "Harry Potter" have returned to the UK? J.K. Rowling went from being on the dole to being richer than the Queen in under ten years.

Re:Imperialism

[stubear]

"Stop mucking with democratically chosen laws of sovereign nations."

Russia is requesting membership into the WTO and part one of the requirements is to respect international copyright law. They are more than welcome to ignore international copyright laws all they want but it will come at the cost of not being allowed membership into the WTO.

Re:Imperialism

[MadJo]

But do they really need more than 50 years of monopoly on their copyrighted material?
How long did it take JK Rowling to earn that much money? Certainly not the amount of time that currently is set in the copyright laws. It's just too long. A lot of great content is locked up by this law, no one in this generation will ever learn of them if this law will still stand.

I'm not against copyright laws, but the ones in place right now are outright ludicrous in regards to amount of time they span.

Why don't they develop their own software?

[Supercooldude]

You'd think that a large and relatively modern country like Russia would be developing all its own software and wouldn't need to pirate software made by American companies.

Re:Why don't they develop their own software?

[muuh-gnu]

Wouldnt that be a collosal wste of time, money and human ressources better spent at something else?

And btw, they aren't "pirating" anything, they are sharing stuff that works for them with their fellow men. Why should it be their problem when some greedy-as-fuck overseas copyright fascists want to censor interpersonal communication and information exchage?

To be precise

[dallaylaen]

To be precise, in Russia you own someone else's software.

The American part should be changed accordingly.