ST. PETERSBURG, June 26 (RIA Novosti) – Legislation that would enable Russian courts to block websites suspected of hosting pirated movies and TV shows got final parliamentary approval on Friday.
The bill, whose final draft does not mention music, needs only to be signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law. If so, it will enter into effect on August 1.
The legislation would allow copyright holders to immediately contact courts if their intellectual property appears online without their permission. They would not be required to first ask the website hosting the content to remove it.
Courts would then decide whether to order such content to be removed. If a website would fail to comply, its online address would be blacklisted.