Belarus Follows Russia’s Lead & Creates Unfriendly Countries List For Legalized Piracy
from the you-know-who-else-made-lists? dept
Roughly a year ago, we discussed Russia’s response to some of the sanctions the West was placing upon it, including its plan to simply legalize copyright infringement, so as to keep the country running despite the crippling sanctions. That blanket legalization plan morphed somewhat months later, when Russia instead pivoted to a plan to create a “unfriendly countries” list for which all kinds of copyright infringement would be legalized. Not surprisingly, that list of unfriendlies mostly amounted to any country that had sanctioned or criticized Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. While these laws have yet to be implemented, none of the announcements by Russia created even the mildest surprise to the West.
Nor, likely, will Belarus’ recent announcement that it was following Russia down this path.
The country of Belarus recently passed a law that allows the use of intellectual property without the consent of copyright holders from so-called “unfriendly” foreign nations. This includes all copyrighted materials such as books, music, movies, TV shows, and computer software.
The law was signed by president Alexander Lukashenko earlier this month, making it legal in Belarus to access pirated materials if the rights holders are from “unfriendly nations,” meaning “foreign states that commit unfriendly actions against Belarusian legal entities and (or) individuals.”
If you were to want to make your own list, but one that ranks the closest allies of the Russian regime, that list, without a doubt, would have Belarus near the very top. Belarus is currently conducting military “training exercises” with Russia right on Ukraine’s border, leading Ukraine to believe another major and violent assault is coming shortly. Belarus also allowed Russia to route through its territory during the early days of the invasion, back when Putin thought he could take the entire country, including Kiev.
All of that is to say: it’s no surprise that Belarus is adopting Russia’s proposed stance like this and, frankly, it may simply be following Moscow’s orders in doing so. Perhaps even as a guinea pig, to see how the West responds before Russia goes down this path itself.
Belarus is a signatory to several treaties regarding intellectual property rights as part of the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the new law would violate its obligations under those treaties. In turn, this will likely isolate Belarus economically and prevent any investment in the country’s local creative industries. It may also influence Russia, which has also been considering laws intended to legalize use of unlicensed copyrighted content from some western countries.
My only quibble is with that last sentence, because I believe the way it begins likely has things exactly backwards. Russia is almost certainly influencing Belarus to take this step, not the other way around.
So what will this all do? Further isolate Belarus and, should Russia follow suit, Russia as well. It also serves as a nice demonstration for how futile it is for Western nations to spend so much time and capital advocating for stricter copyright enforcement throughout the world, given that other nations are happy to simply change course when it suts them.
Comments on “Belarus Follows Russia’s Lead & Creates Unfriendly Countries List For Legalized Piracy”
Man, I hope that Russia and Belarus don’t violate MY copyrights, such as downloading my latest album on the internet archive. I really hope they don’t pirate my works. (That was really, really hard sarcasm, BTW.)
Copyright has been a joke for the last 20 years.
If someone with more money infringes you go bankrupt trying to defend it.
The only ones that win are the Lawyers
Re:
That’s anything and always.
It’s probably meant to mostly allow free use of commercial software, but it is very funny that such a law encourages consumption of “unfriendly” countries’ cultural output.
Re: They did not think that one through, no
‘Let’s see, I can pay money out of my limited budget for local content or I can get a bunch of content completely free so long as it’s from another country, choices choices…’
Ho hum
Oh my God! What a horrible thing for them to do! How will the US economy survive such an onslaught? Starving artists will be starving even more. Oh the humanity!
Re: Thankfully for all it turns out all their claims are blatant lies
The funny thing is that if the people and groups who constantly decry copyright infringement and love to bring up how terrible the financial harms it causes are to the economy were right something like a country-wide open season on copyrighted works would be more effective than anything short of a nuke, causing untold financial harm across the globe as billions upon billions just up and disappeared from multiple economies.
Funny thing about Software. It does things. It translates information. It tells you what mechanical devices “see”. It even helps you build other Software.
Name another copyrighted thing that does that. The books will just sit there. Same for the music, no matter the media it is on. The movie doesn’t play itself.
But because Software does stuff, it also gets abused. There’s a whole industry involved in attacking, or defending against attacks, through Software. And because people are people, and computers are networked, a lot of Software has functionality to update itself when the creator changes it. For new features, or to plug vulnerabilities.
There’s even a name, for when “the call comes from within the house”. Supply Chain Attack.
Russia, and Belarus, are declaring that they will no longer pay the people they got this software from, that they will copy it to their hearts content.
But it is the producers of the software that have the secrets the software uses to verify that an update is valid. And those producers will have very little incentive to just let go. They might even be hostile to the idea.
I wonder how comfortable those countries are feeling, about updating their software these days. … or about NOT updating their software.
Interesting choice, wouldn’t you say?
Re:
Piracy is just one area that can be addressed with new digital infrastructure by country, region or territory.
This forum post on a new ransomware attack of VM’s happens every day, which is easily circumvented by new digital infrastructure. Its a play-by-play of what digital piracy really is. No newspaper clipping used in the ransome note either.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/782193/esxi-ransomware-help-and-support-topic-esxiargs-args-extension/
In many cases, OPSEC is just taking the form of digital janitors, sifting through the garbage after the fact.
Internet 2.0 resets most of the insecurities, with command-and-control operations ceasing to be a problem, negating most of the weaknesses of Internet 1.0.
Internet 1.0 has its usefullness, but commerce 2.0 regains its stride very quickly on new digital infrastructure, in addition to the growth and sustainability benefits of limited geo access.
Its easy to laugh at how fast the Internet became irrelevant with population growth. Most domestic infra will have less that 500 million or even 100 million in many countries. The information superhighway ceased to exist when it swelled to factory farming levels of density. Easily undone with Internet 2.0.
There is more than 1 form of piracy occuring, which impacts small, medium and large businesses. The solution is already available too.
“Belarus Follows Russia’s Lead & Creates Unfriendly Countries List For Legalized Piracy ”
This sounds like a Junior High School adolescent temper tantrum.
But is it really piracy?
Copyright being a government granted monopoly, those outside the granting country are under no obligation to not copy, reprint or even sell copies of reprints copyrighted works unless their country’s government has entered into a treaty to give the granting country’s copyrights the force of law. Treaties can always be withdrawn from or abrogated by one of the parties. Belarusians taking advantage of this move are not pirates, but privateers.
Unclear
Is this simply allowing locals in those countries to use software unrestricted, or is it the intent to be a form of Pirate Bay safe from outside interference, serving the whole world with material bypassing the rest of the world’s pay for play system?
It might be more successful with the latter if the countries doing this did not have a reputation for serving up malware and ransomware. For now, they’ll have better luck with (safer) more passive content like books, music, and video.
OTOH, I have no idea where bitorrent material comes from, and likely the sources are hiding behind a VPN. I suspect going forward, the bad guys in most movies will be the Russians, so basically they will be distributing western anti-Russian propaganda as part of their attempt to annoy the west. Not the brightest move… but then, neither was invading the Ukraine, it seems.
One result will be pitate streaming sites popping up
There is already one being buil that will have 16000 channels for $20 per month.
the "naughty list"
so…. when these countries get off naughty list. will they get to keep the pirated stuff without penalty? or will they loose all rights and need to pay for what they already have?