US Accuses Russian VK Social Network of Piracy - Report

A fresh report issued by the US Trade Representative's Office accused Russia's social network VK, also known as Vkontakte, of infringing intellectual property rights, despite the efforts exerted by the company's management to cope with piracy.

"Reports that VK is taking steps to address piracy are encouraging… Despite these positive signals, VK reportedly continues to be a hub of infringing activity and the U.S. motion picture industry reports that they find thousands of infringing files on the site each month," the report dubbed 2017 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets said on Friday.

However, the report specified that the social network had exerted efforts to reach licensing agreements with large recording companies, fought against the applications that allowed downloading illegal content from the website and tried to experiment with technologies aimed at recognition of content.

The report focusing on infringing intellectual property rights also mentioned such websites and services openly or allegedly connected with Russia as rutracker.org, mp3va.com, sci-hub.io and kinogo.club among others.

The Russian social media network has yet to comment on the allegations.