Apparently, the Russian Federation continues its crackdown on digital piracy – today the government wants to enforce even tougher measures against copyright infringers. A new bill was approved a few days ago: it allows for fines of up to $30,000 for ISPs, search engines and Internet users who fail to comply with a blacklist of websites already subjected to copyright complaints.

On the 1st of August Russia has introduced new law aimed at fighting Internet piracy. The legislation is called worldwide as the Russian SOPA and takes a tough line with services offering or linking to illegal content online. Under the law, copyright complaints against an online service can lead to that domain being added to a national blacklist in case it fails to take down the illegal material within a few days.

The Russian pirates did notice when the law came into action, because in August they faced the problem of finding their favorite TV shows like Breaking Bad on the largest torrent service in the country – RuTracker.Org (ex-Torrens.Ru, which was shut down entirely by its Moscow registrar on procuracy demand and had to launch a new domain on Bahamas). Now, less than two months after the initial legislation was enforced, the authorities keep pushing through further punitive measures for digital pirates and those deemed to be assisting them.

Russian news agency confirmed that a Parliamentary Committee has already approved a new bill which will allow a range of online services to be fined in case they fail to block illegal content and websites from the local blacklist. The new legislation introduces fines of up to $30,000 to be levied against search engines, web hosts, broadband providers and even individual users.

The largest fines will be imposed on companies ignoring the requirements of the blacklist. As for the regular users, they can only expect fines of $150, which equals to 40 miles per hour over speeding ticket. Thus far, victims of the new law already exist: a few days ago, Russian authorities ordered the blocking of Rutor, one of the largest torrent websites in the country. Although the service wasn’t on the national blacklist and remained available via Internet service providers, unless it complies with a previous order its IP address will be blocked. At the moment, the law only covers TV shows and movies, but the authorities want to amend it and add music, books and other works to the list.