Russian social network Vkontakte is Russian Facebook. It is very popular. Many people use it every day. This social network allows its users to upload a video and music, share this content. Other users can not only listen or watch music or video, they can also download it thanks to different apps or special web-sites.
Viktor Tsoy was prominent and popular Russian singer. His music and performances are still popular and available in internet. Russian social network Vkontakte is not exception. Russian company has discovered that its music is available in social network without right holder’s consent. Russian copyright law provides the right holders with opportunity to apply for restriction of access to web-resource, as preliminary measure, if their copyright is infringed. The Russian company filed a suit against Vkontakte and asked for preliminary measure.
The Moscow court sided with right holder and has ordered to restrict access to Russian social network. According to current rules if right holder applies for restriction of access to web-resource in question as preliminary measure it must file copyright infringement lawsuit within certain period of time – two weeks. The court ordered Roskomnadzor to restrict access to Russian social network. But Roskomnadzor failed to execute the court order. It “did not find infringement”, in other words Russian internet watchdog did not find IP objects in question, despite the fact that they have been listed in court’s order.
The Roskomnadzor’s representative has explained why it did not restrict the access to Vkontakte under the court order. The authority received court order and checked whether this content available in social network. But nothing has been found. According to Roskomnadzor the social network has deleted infringing content. Therefore there was no ground for blocking. But the fact is that the Roskomnadzor does not have authority to decide whether to execute the court order – it must only execute it. But the correspondent of one web-resource has found certain songs, mentioned in court decision, in social network.