It’s probably a good time for Russian social network vKontakte to have sorted its licensing deals with music labels. Why? The Russian government is reportedly planning a new crackdown on piracy through social networks.
Local reports suggest that a change in the law could see social media services lose their “information broker” status in Russia, which protects them from being held liable for copyright-infringing uploads by users. Yes, this is Russia’s equivalent of the safe-harbour laws that are under attack from rightsholders in the US and EU. Note, for now this change in Russia is in the form of a draft bill which has been sent to the Ministry of Communications according to TorrentFreak: there is no guarantee that it will be passed without further changes. The bill also includes measures to regulate search engines in the way they show results for copyrighted content.
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…