Cabinet takes new measures to fight piracy
The Russian Cabinet has decided to eliminate marketplaces and stands selling pirated audio and video production, said Minister of Press Mikhail Lesin after the Cabinet session, which had discussed the measures to protect intellectual property and copyright.
Lesin said that this was only one of the ways to tackle the problem of illegal production.
According to him, it was decided to set up a Cabinet commission for copyright protection. It will be headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.
"The commission's task is to work out measures, step by step, to regulate copyright-related issues," Lesin said.
In addition, the minister said that it was planned to improve legislation as part of the measures aimed at copyright protection. "We hope that the State Duma (the parliament's lower house) will soon debate the amendments to the Act on Copyright and Allied Rights", in order to protect authors' rights more effectively, he stressed.
The minister added that new measures for defining the legality of audio and video production and software would be worked out soon. "We shall give up stamps and holograms, which have proved inefficient," Lesin said.
The Press Minister emphasised that the Cabinet would take into consideration the opinion of the manufacturers, consumers, and authors.
Lesin said that the Cabinet also planned to examine the protection of rights of the Russian manufacturers.
