14 DAY TRIAL // It’s obvious that VKontakte, Russia’s Facebook is no longer under the old leadership and has already started to lean over to the desires of the country’s government.
The social network has reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with the Russian telecoms watchdog to combat movie piracy.
The move should help VKontakte fit better with Russia’s anti-piracy plans, but also to be taken off the United States’ special report regarding markets that are notorious at infringing copyright.
VKontakte has been slammed on countless occasions for its approach to the topic and the site is full of unauthorized content, including the latest movies and entire music libraries. Millions of users have been taking advantage of the site’s lenient attitude towards the matter and have uploaded immense quantities of content.
VKontakte has now signed an understanding with Roskomnadzor, the telecoms watchdog, hoping to get through this entire situation and straighten itself out. Basically, the document is a consensus on how Internet companies in Russia deal with online piracy and how they replace the pirated content with legal alternatives. Nearly 40 sites have already joined the cause, but VK has refused to sign so far, as the company’s leaders saw this as an attack on the users’ freedom.
Now that the old leaders have left the company more or less on their own accord, VK’s new execs are setting things straight and taking actions that are more in the government’s interest rather than the network’s.
VKontakte will now have to block infringing content within a reasonable timeframe and will seek to introduce a fingerprint technology that will help it detect copyrighted content. The measure is similar to the one adopted by Dropbox, which will let users upload whatever they want, but won’t let them share the infringing content with others.
VKontakte is already facing various lawsuits. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents record labels from all over the world, is accusing the social network of creating a huge library of music that it does not own the rights to and that it has been offering it as a service within the site.
Hollywood studios have also chosen to take legal action against VKontakte, something that’s been a long-time coming.
It remains to be seen whether the decision to sign the memorandum will push the music and movie industries to put a stop to the legal actions they have launched against the Russian site.