Russian Software Piracy Crackdown Restricts Free Speech

reporter writes "According to a report recently filed by the Washington Post, the Kremlin has finally begun to crackdown on software piracy ... with a twist. The Russian state agency is targetting political enemies with claims of piracy, including independent news media, political parties, and private advocacy groups. In particular, 'the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, one of the last outposts of critical journalism in Russia, suspended publication of its regional edition in the southern city of Samara on Monday after prosecutors opened a criminal case against its editor, alleging that his publication used unlicensed software.'" This doesn't even take into account our recent discussion of the Kremlin's grip on internet access in that country.

Comments

Oh no!!!

[CaptainPatent]

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. They've already struck /. too!

great

[JustNiz]

It'll just drive more people to switch to Linux.

Re:great

[Creepy Crawler]

If you think OSes really matter, get a clue.

The way they deal with things: Tell us what you were doing, or you're going to a Siberian gulag. Or we'll kill you.

Re:great

[wizardforce]

In this case, I don't think it mattered what OS was being used, they'd find something to charge him with.

Re:great

[Chandon Seldon]

You're still a bit better off if they had to fabricate a charge than if you were really guilty of something as easy and obvious to demonstrate as software piracy. Looking at it from another angle, this is one of the reasons why it's socially detrimental to have poorly enforced laws against common activities (whether it be piracy, drug possession, low speed limits, whatever) - it gives abusive authorities the ability to selectively enforce those laws against people they don't like for some reason.

Re:great

[Grishnakh]

Not really. As laws don't really work in Russia, they may confiscate servers with false suspicion of piracy and then return them (of course) but down time is too expensive to afford, so people just give bribes or shut down.

How is that different than America?

That's a very good point: it's no different from America at all.

Of course, did anyone ever say that America was a country where people had freedom, and the laws actually worked? Any such person is a liar or an idiot.

Re:great

[Beardo the Bearded]

You think these charges would go to court?

These charges are to put the dissenters out of business. I suppose that's better than being assassinated, but you've got to realize that most of the world does not operate the way the Western World does. If you criticize most governments, you die. We take for granted that we can say what we want about the people in charge. In reality, most people get killed. That makes martyrs, so the best bet is to discredit those who oppose you first. "Yeah, they were totally unscrupulous. Look at all the pirated software they're using. You can't believe a thing these guys say."

Look at Tienanmen Square - the Chinese murdered thousands of protesters, and now it's illegal to even mention it. I know, they aren't Russian. All the Russians do is inject you with plutonium, set off car bombs, and steal your computers. That's if you're a reporter!

The US may suck sometimes, but at least you've got a shot at a trial. Gitmo notwithstanding, of course, but imagine if reporting on Gitmo got you sent there for life.

Re:great

[Grishnakh]

I guess it depends on how flexible you are with the term "freedom", and how far back you want to go in time.

Marijuana has been illegal back to the 40s or so. Polygamy has been illegal all along; it's a relationship between consenting adults, but somehow it's illegal in a country that promotes "freedom". Before 1861, slavery was legal, meaning that millions of people had no freedom whatsoever. Before the 1910s or 20s, women weren't allowed to vote, so they were effectively no more free than children, who also can't vote (but for good reason). I don't know exactly when men who didn't own land were finally allowed to vote, but that was in there too. I guess if you're a white, male, land owner, you probably had the most freedom around 1790. If you're a black female, however, right now is probably your best bet.

Maybe America should just stop yapping about "freedom" altogether, since I don't think we ever had it at all. It's just a jingoistic buzzword to make the people think they have it better here than elsewhere.

Anybody surprised?

[Creepy Crawler]

Ever since Gorbachev helped end the Cold War (and the USSR), the Russians have tried to fill a void left by that power vacuum.

Unfortunately, many ex-KGB people are out there vying for power towards the "good old days". Turns out that someone is Putin right now. Power and threat of assassination should be enough to shut up critics.. or eat a dust-grain of Po.

Could the Russians have a great state? Absolutely... but not with the KGB still distributively in power.

Ad absurdum "In Soviet Rusia jokes"... because thats where they're headed back to.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Turns out that someone is Putin right now.

Yesterday, nobody was Putin. Tomorrow, someone else will be Putin ;)

Re:Anybody surprised?

[TheNarrator]

Two high level defectors in the 1980s Anatoliy Golitsyn (Author of "The Perestroika Deception) and Jan Sejna (Author of "We Will Bury You") have written books and tried to tell the west that Perestroika was not genuine reform, but just a strategic retreat planned by the KGB (now GRU) that would help the Soviets catch up to the west technologically and economically after which they would return back to dictatorship and imperialism.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[Creepy Crawler]

Was massive land loss part of their equation?

What is it now? 16 countries? And they're pissing them off at bat.

If anything they have the most to thank towards Global warming.. nobody wants Siberia. However, there is a treasure trove of minerals that can be extracted when the permafrost thaws.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[MightyMartian]

And guess what, on this side of the Atlantic, you don't risk government persecution if you call a spade a spade.

This attempt to make the US sound like Putinocracy or Communist China is absurd, and worse, bullshit. There are abuses, there are always abuses, but at the end of the day, where would you rather be right at this moment in time; Moscow or Detroit?

Re:Anybody surprised?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

but just a strategic retreat planned by the KGB (now GRU) that would help the Soviets catch up to the west technologically and economically after which they would return back to dictatorship and imperialism.

If this were true, which I doubt, then it came with a very high price - the permanent breakup of the USSR and the loss of 14 Soviet Republics (Republic no. 15 is Russia - there were 15 Republics in the USSR), some of which aren't interested at all in being vassals to Mother Russia - Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova. I get the impression that Armenia and Azerbaijan are somewhat indifferent to Russia and the 5 "Stan" countries are interested in Russia only in so far as they can get something (ie. money) out of it. Only Belarus remains loyal to Mother Russia and got paid back earlier in the year by Mother Russia telling it that it better pay up what it owed on natural gas and oil that came from Russia or there would be some, ahem, "unpleasantness".

Re:Anybody surprised?

[NeutronCowboy]

Actually, it's not just the ex-KGB people who are pining for the "good old days". It's a large chunk of Russia. Yes, there is a significant (even if badly beat up) opposition. However, there is a much larger contingent of ardent Putin supporters. His 80% approval rating is probably inflated, but his real numbers aren't all that far off.

It's been said that the prerequisite for Democracy is a strong middle-class. Guess what - Russia went straight from Feudalism with a complete lack of middle-class to Communism, with its similar lack of a strong middle-class. This means that the political tradition in Russia is one of central strong men (and one woman) who have near absolute power over everything. I don't see that changing anytime soon - the Enlightenment period is long past, and the current global atmosphere does not support its revival.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[Chuckstar]

Have you ever been to Detroit? I'd pick Moscow.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[ericspinder]

Was massive land loss part of their equation? Maybe, I believe that it's a well known fact that colonies and occupation cost a ship load of money. A country is much better off dominating economically than militarily.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[n dot l]

If this were true, which I doubt, then it came with a very high price - the permanent breakup of the USSR and the loss of 14 Soviet Republics (Republic no. 15 is Russia - there were 15 Republics in the USSR), some of which aren't interested at all in being vassals to Mother Russia. Meh. The Russians annexed that land once, they probably think they can do it again.

Although, on second thought, I don't know why they'd even bother declaring a new USSR when they can just as easily control their puppet states through other means, like economic pressure (Russia now supplies a third of Europe's oil and natural gas), "diplomacy" (like the recently ratified withdrawal from the CFE treaty and other scare tactics), and covert means (the KGB always was good at bribing and blackmailing others into doing their bidding). And leaving those people "independent" helps reduce internal and international tensions so, if anything, I'd say breaking up the USSR was a net win - if this is indeed true.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[NeutronCowboy]

I doubt that the Perestroika was a planned retreat by the KGB. I do agree, however, that the KGB people are still smarting from what they saw as the loss of their position as one of the superpowers in the world. As is a large chunk of Russia. I believe that the Perestroika movement was genuine, but it ultimately didn't have enough support across a large enough swath of the population. The ex-KGB people though do have that support.

Russia is already a dictatorship (when was the last open election in Russia?) in all but name, and it's certainly working on the imperialism part. Anybody who's treating Russia as a friend or a partner will be in for a rude awakening. EU, I'm looking at you.

Re:Anybody surprised?

[innerweb]

My greatest fear is not what we are, but what we may yet become.

The slippery slope gets more slippery the further along it you are.

We have nothing to fear, but fear itself, and fear itself may be used to justify the end to the freedoms that we have left, as it has been used as a justification to limit/end the freedoms it already has.

InnerWeb

Kind of funny

[TheMeuge]

It's pretty funny that they're using this particular excuse to persecute political opposition. So I guess that's what how far they've come in the last 50 years - from malicious prosecution under the guise of national security, to malicious prosecution under the guise of protection against piracy.

Well... at least they're not being cliché.

Re:Kind of funny

[adminstring]

It seems that you have tried to use the character &#233, otherwise known as "Freedom E." Freedom E has been blocked by the national censorship proxy server in order to protect children from terrorists. If you persist in attempting to use this character, you will be sent to Guantanamo for re-education regarding which Extended ASCII characters conform to the President's English, namely &#153, &#169, &#174, and, especially important during the holiday season, &#134. Good day :-).

In Soviet Russia..

[KazerSoza]

In Soviet Russia the software pirates you!

Smart

[faloi]

As pointed out in the article, they're killing two birds with one stone. They get to appear more pro-active against piracy after all the requests from Western governments to try to stop piracy, and they get to silence critics. Criticism from Western governments could be met with appeals for funding if they want them to come up with a better way to stop piracy. Speaking of money, there might be some money changing hands from major software vendors to support anti-piracy measures.

Re:Smart

[timeOday]

Unfortunately selective enforcement is nefarious because it's so hard to prove. Just as a black person here in the US.

Denial of Service by Terms of Service

[Speare]

When I was working on a MMORPG years ago, this sort of behavior was a worry. It was a much smaller, less consequential worry, but it was there. Player A would call the company, and whine to mommy that Player B was breaking the rules. We had to be careful about policies so we didn't just disable Player B prematurely during the investigation, or it would become a new dynamic in the game. Want to invade a guild hall? Make sure their best players are disabled due to investigations.

It didn't catch on, but at the time I called this a DOS by TOS: a denial of service by (ab)using the terms of service; the terms of service can be a weapon if the environment is competitive enough.

Re:Denial of Service by Terms of Service

[evann]

Within the ranks of AOL staff, accounts which had overhead abilities could suspend other accounts. These suspended accounts then have to call AOL and talk about the infraction, hear the warning or whatever, and then they get the account back.

Phishing and trojans back in the days I am talking about..(95-2000? maybe they have the same setup) were pretty easy to pull off. You could easily get the password for one of these accounts and go ahead and start suspending many other accounts. There was even a hierarchy of these accounts, some had more banning power than others (and could terminate other overhead accounts). The phrase used when one person terminated another was called a TOS.

Two things came of all this, the AO-underworld would start killing off eachother's accounts in mass. You can't call AOL to get an account reactivated which you created from phished credit cards. The second, a lot of people claiming they didn't break the TOS when they got TOS'd, and AOL laxing it's punishments.

Player A just uses multiple accounts to complain. Player B eventually gets terminated. OR the staff will have to start letting people off the hook because they just don't know the truth.

it sure doesn't help all these soviet jokes...

[Bananatree3]

The suggestive powers of all the thousands of "in soviet russia" jokes are now taking their toll. Now see what you've done, Slashdot? You've brought back the Iron Curtain! All hilarity aside, this is not a good trend at all. It started good in the 90's, but I'm not like this trend

Article is a flamebait.

[padonak]

At the risk of gaining a few more /. "freaks", I have to point out that this post is just on of the many recent submissions by reporter, most of which are simply anti-russian FUD.
He even expressed his desire to have a dedicated anti-russian section here.
While bashing a Cold War enemy is certainly fun, I don't see much "news for nerds" here. Keep /. politics focused on U.S., please.

Re:Article is a flamebait.

[Clandestine_Blaze]

While bashing a Cold War enemy is certainly fun, I don't see much "news for nerds" here. Keep /. politics focused on U.S., please. Wait, are you against FUD in general, or are you against FUD only when it applies to topics related to Russia? We cannot simply replace one "FUD" with another. (Emphasis placed as I am not claiming that the topic is FUD.)

The topic of the submission was "Russian Software Piracy Crackdown Restricts Free Speech". Again, emphasis mine. If we get rid of this article on the grounds that it is not news-for-nerds, then we might as well dismiss every article ever posted on /. that is related to the RIAA, MPAA, P2P, and File sharing.

Also, Slashdot has a worldwide readership. It would be a folly to filter out every topic that does not relate to the U.S. Regardless how how you may feel about the foreign news, worldwide political events will affect people in the States as much as anywhere else. For instance, there are plenty of foreign companies that do business in Russia. If any one of them ever use their position as a pulpit to disagree with the Kremlin, then they too may get a knock at the door for software piracy.

Lastly, you claim this article is FUD, as you say everything Reporter posts is. I don't see anywhere in your post your rebuttals or WHY you claim that it is FUD. I even read the original Washington Post article that this post linked to, and it seems pretty clear that Russia is only selectively enforcing copyright laws against organizations that have spoken out against the government.

That's not anti-Russian FUD, it's reality! Please explain to us why it is FUD. And saying "Because it is anti-Russian" doesn't cut it.

Re:Article is a flamebait.

[padonak]

Wait, are you against FUD in general, or are you against FUD only when it applies to topics related to Russia? I'm against FUD in general. I've hit the "200 friends/foes" limit because of this.

The topic of the submission was "Russian Software Piracy Crackdown Restricts Free Speech". Every couple of weeks there are articles in russian press about police raids and confiscations of counterfeit CDs. I don't see any of these news here on /. But when the "free press" (which BTW is just as corrupt and self-involved as the ones they bash) is concerned, suddenly there's an article in WP and a helpful submission of our own "reporter".

If any one of them ever use their position as a pulpit to disagree with the Kremlin, then they too may get a knock at the door for software piracy. No, they'll first get a visit from the Tax Police, you don't know much about business there.

Russia is only selectively enforcing copyright laws against organizations that have spoken out against the government Does the name "allofmp3.com" ring a bell? There are dosens of music sites and online libraries (with OCRed books) that were closed in the last five years, yet WP and this reporter guy don't talk much about it.

That's not anti-Russian FUD, it's reality! Please explain to us why it is FUD. And saying "Because it is anti-Russian" doesn't cut it. I chose to call a selective representation of reality "FUD". Just like most of us call "Get The Facts" site reports about Windows vs. Linux performance. The results of the benchmarks were real, it's the test conditions that were ...hmmm... uneven.

Stop picking on Russia

[Orig_Club_Soda]

They opposed the Iraq War to maintain their grip on the regional oil market, fund North Korea's nukes, fund Iran's nukes... They are against George Bush. How can Russian government be in the wrong!?

When you get potatoes make vodka

[metoc]

So when the USA starts using vague negative labels like pirates or terrorists, it is easy for foreign government to use them.

Standard political tactics, label people you don't like with them too.

Every Federal Law is an enemy of freedom

[tjstork]

Let the events in Russia be a lesson to those left wingers that would have the federal government impose socialism, and to those right wingers who would have the federal government impose religion.

Every federal law has to be viewed as a potential for enslavement, another excuse for a would be dictator to trounce freedom. Those who are afraid of the government while Bush is in office, or if Hillary or Obama were elected, need to really ask, why do we have to have a government that -anyone- is afraid of.

The best federal government is the one where it doesn't matter which political party runs it.

What worries me even more....

[Korveck]

...is that most Russians don't seem to care that their freedoms and rights are eroded away by Putin, as long as Motherland Russia's economy is looking strong.

Re:50 years

[MightyMartian]

predict it'll take a minimum of 50 years before Russia even starts resembling anything like a Western democracy. Right now, on can say they went from Stalinism to Putinism, and are practically a petrostate, with no hope of regaining the technological edge they had, because of their bandit-capitalistic ways.

I'm going to go out on a limb and state that I don't think Russia will ever be a liberal Western-style democracy. It won't be the quite the dictatorship that the USSR was, nor will it be quite as authoritarian as the Czarist regime, but it will ultimately remain a centrally-run autocratic regime with some of the trappings of democracy. I can't lay the blame on Putin so much as Yeltsin, who so thoroughly bungled the economic transition that a lot of Russians came to the conclusion that democracy wasn't all it was chalked up to be. Putin is giving the Russian people a familiar face; strong, authoritarian and dedicated to making Russia great. It's an incredibly common aspect of the Russian cultural motif; Peter the Great and Stalin are, to my mind, major inspirations for Putin.