Google and Telecoms Watchdog Roscomnadzor Discuss Anti-Piracy Laws

• Earlier this month the Roscomnadzor criticized Google for infringing copyright laws in Russia.
• The tech giant has finally responded to the Roscomnadzor and met with Russian officials on November 14.
• Both parties are working towards resolving the conflict of interests at Google’s corporate center in California.

Russian telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor invited Google to sign an official anti-piracy memorandum. The tech giant responded to the authorities and held a meeting to discuss piracy and other important topics. The memorandum proposed by the Roscomnadzor has already been signed by a number of companies in a bid to rid online platforms of pirated content.

Roscomnadzor revealed details about the official meeting stating “One of the key points of the talks was to discuss the situation around the violation by the company of the requirements of Russian law to ensure the filtering of Google search results of information prohibited in Russia.”

The telecoms watchdog has criticized Google time and again for not removing piracy links from its search engine in a timely fashion and may even impose a fine on the tech giant. Roscomnadzor has created a database of infringing websites by working with popular movie, television and internet companies. The listed websites and their associated content need to be removed as per the anti-piracy memorandum.

The anti-piracy regulations set by the Roscomnadzor is very similar to that of the DMCA. However, the DMCA allows copyright holders to directly approach the tech giant for removing piracy links. The Roscomnadzor’s agreement requires participants to remove all infringing content listed by the Russian authority without any involvement of the copyright holders. The database is to be queried every five minutes by all signatories, and all updated links need to be removed. The full database is set to go live within 3 months.

It is currently unknown if Google has agreed to the Roscomnadzor’s terms or if it will continue following DMCA regulations only. Search engines in Russia are obliged to connect to the government’s official database, and the tech giant has not done so yet. The company may be facing fines if it does not filter search results based on the country’s FGIS blacklist.

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