The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) made public yesterday a list of 30 Internet and physical markets in various countries which “have been the subject of enforcement action connected with counterfeiting and piracy, or may merit further investigation for possible intellectual property rights (IPR) infringements.” Among them are Vkontakte.ru, Russia’s leading social networking site, and Rutracker.ru, an important Russian torrent portal, as well as the Savelovskiy market in Moscow.
According to USTR, Vkontakte.ru “permits users to provide access to allegedly infringing materials.” The social network ranks among the most visited sites in Russia “and among the 40 most visited sites in the world,” acknowledges USTR.
BitTorrent tracking sites such as Rutracker.ru “have become notorious for infringing activities, even though such sites may also be used for lawful purposes.”
Allong with the Petrivka Market in Kiev, Ukraine, Moscow’s Savelovskiy Market reportedly makes “pirated goods widely and openly available.”
“These notorious markets not only hurt American workers and businesses, but are threats to entrepreneurs and industries around the world,” said United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
The US government “urges the responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting in these and similar markets, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets List to pursue legal actions where appropriate.”
For example, on Feb 14, USTR announced an IPR action plan with the Government of Ukraine that included a commitment to “act in a timely manner against infringing Internet websites identified by right holders as allofmp3.com clones, such as mp3fiesta.com.” Russia-based allofmp3 was formerly the world’s largest server-based pirate music website. Since it was shut down in 2007, nearly identical sites such as mp3fiesta have taken its place. The current USTR list includes such allofmp3 clones as notorious markets.
Vkontakte.ru is partially owned by Mail.ru Group, a leading Russian Internet group, formerly known as DST, which went public on London Stock Exchange in October 2010.
Source: USTR
Update March 18
The report “doesn’t reflect things” done by the company to fight piracy, said Andrei Melnik, a spokesman for Vkontakte.ru, to The Moscow Times. One move saw some 100,000 copyrighted videos purged from the network after its producer, THT television, was given permission to remove illegally uploaded content, Melnik said.
An official at the piracy watchdog Russian Shield, Oleg Yashin, said the U.S. report’s findings were outdated and “too vague.”
“It looks like the people who were conducting it are not real experts,” Yashin said to The Moscow Times, adding that Rutracker.org’s collaboration with legal content providers is a well-known fact.