Medvedev suggests copyright reform concept to G20 leaders
MOSCOW. Nov 3 (Interfax) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has sent a message to G20 leaders to suggest a new concept of intellectual property use and protection on the Internet. The message was posted on the Kremlin website on Thursday.
"Digital technologies and global information networks have made a real breakthrough in information accumulation and exchange. The old principles of intellectual property protection established in a completely different technological context do not work any longer in an emerging environment, and, therefore, new conceptual arrangements are required for international regulation of intellectual activities on the Internet," the message runs.
"To regulate effectively the use of the results of intellectual activities in the context of modern technologies, it is necessary to meet the following tasks: to determine the limits of the legitimate use of the results of intellectual activities by Internet users; to expand the opportunities of right holders to manage and exercise the rights to the results of intellectual activities on the Internet; to amend the way of obtaining a right holder's consent; to design a legal instrument for exercising and protection of right holders' rights to the results of intellectual activities on the Internet; to monitor the observance of copyright and neighboring rights on the Internet by information intermediaries and those who place the content, rather than ordinary Internet users," the message said.
The president also called for enforcing "human rights and implementation of the social mission of the state."
"The state should establish a certain level of legal protection for the objects of copyright and neighboring rights on the Internet and give a right holder an opportunity to choose a model of protection of his or her work that suits his or her interests best," Medvedev said.
"A major element of a new approach to the protection of copyright and neighboring rights could be the introduction of the assumption that the use of objects of copyright and neighboring rights on the Internet shall be considered free unless the right holder declares otherwise. At the same time a minimum level of protection that will not require any declaration from the right holder must be established," he said.
"If found guilty, information intermediaries on the Internet (communications service providers, Internet website and domain name owners, etc.) should be held responsible for violation of copyright and neighboring rights on general grounds, except for specifically established cases (e.g., if they were not aware or were not supposed to be aware of the illegality of content)," Medvedev said.
"The proposed approaches call for creation of new legal, economic and technological mechanisms, which would meet the interests of all actors present on the Internet (users, right holders, information intermediaries, etc.) and provide right holders with the means to exercise and independently protect their rights.
"The implementation of these initiatives will require amendments to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, other treaties that determine the modern international legal consensus (in particular, the Universal Copyright Convention, the WIPO Copyright Treaty), and, possibly, adoption of a new international treaty," the message says.