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On 17 March 2011, Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, presented the regular report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the organisation’s main decision-making body. The report consists of overviews of issues raised in the participating countries, activities of the Representative in the last reporting period and planned activities for the next reporting period. A large part of the report consists of the analysis of issues raised in 56 of the OSCE participating States. The report touches upon several issues concerning media freedom, inter alia, media pluralism, editorial...

As reported in a previous issue (see IRIS 2011-2/36) the Federal Service to Control Observance of Law in the Sphere of Protection of Cultural Heritage (Rosokhrankultura) at the Ministry of Culture was assigned and conducted in 2008-2010 the accreditation procedure in all six fields of collective management, including public performance, broadcasting and cablecasting of musical works. The results of the accreditation process were recently successfully challenged in the courts by bidders that had failed to obtain state permits. On 25 January 2011 the Arbitration Court of the City of Moscow by resolution...

On 21 December 2010 the State Duma (parliament) adopted at the third and last reading the bill “О защите детей от информации, причиняющей вред их здоровью и развитию” (On the Protection of Minors against Information Detrimental to their Health and Development) (see IRIS 2009-8/29), which was signed into law by the President on 29 December 2010. It comes into force on 1 September 2012. The new federal statute shall regulate “products of the mass media, printed materials, audiovisual materials on any material object, computer programmes and databases, as well as information disseminated by means...

The Ministry of Culture has completed a process of awarding special permits envisioned by Article 1245 of the Fourth Part of the Civil Code introduced on 1 January 2008 (see IRIS Plus 2008-2). On 24 September 2010 it awarded the Russian Union of Rightsholders (RSP), headed by famous film director Nikita Mikhalkov, the status of an accredited organisation. This is in fact a governmental licence to collect fees on all imported electronic devices and blank recordable media on behalf of authors. The Russian Union of Rightsholders will collect 1 percent of the price of blank media and electronic devices...

The recent Resolution of the Plenary of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation “On Judicial Practice Related to the Statute of the Russian Federation ‘On the Mass Media’” of 15 June 2010, No. 16 (see IRIS 2010-6/40) refers to the issue of liability for statements of the readers/viewers made on the fora and chat pages of an Internet site registered as a mass media outlet. If this section of the web-site is not pre-moderated such an outlet can become liable only if it received a complaint from Roskomnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media)...