Court Orders First Content Blockades Under New Anti-Piracy Law

The new anti-piracy law that came into effect Thursday last week in Russia has just claimed its first pair of victims, both for carrying links to unauthorized copies of TV shows.

Following the debut last week of Russia’s new SOPA-style anti-piracy law, Kino Bez Granits (Cinema Without Borders) filed a lawsuit in the Moscow City Court against social networking giant vKontakte. The film distribution company said that the site had been making available five of their movies without permission.
The claim was incomplete and was rejected by the Court, but now just a week later the first successful claims have passed into the system.
Filed at the Moscow City Court by TV channel TNT, the complaints state that torrent site rutor.org is unlawfully facilitating piracy of three local sitcoms. Another site, Turbofilm.tv, is said to be offering copies of “The IT Crowd.”

The Court agreed there is infringement occurring and has issued an order to the sites’ hosts compelling them to block the content. If the hosts fail to disable access to the content within 24 hours, the sites face being completely blocked at the ISP level.
The complainant, in this case TNT, now has two weeks to file a lawsuit with the court. If it fails to do so, the content can be reinstated.