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To turn intellectual property into gold is a key business for the creative audiovisual industry. The avalanche of national and world-wide copyright piracy claims concerning audiovisual works is further proof of this. International agreements such as the TRIPS of the WTO take into account the economic value of holding copyright and aim to ensure that copyrights are internationally respected and so does national legislation protecting authors’ rights and neighbouring rights. Whereas it is true that intellectual property can be turned into gold, Shakespeare also reminds us, through the trials and...

New powers were given to the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Mass Communications, Telecommunications and Protection of Cultural Heritage ( Россвязьохранкультура ) by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in March 2007 (see IRIS 2007-7: 18). The Service now not only provides licensing of broadcasting, as well as organisation and supply of the licensing commission (the Federal Competition Commission), but also performs both the legal regulation and the supervision in this field. In the absence of a broadcasting statute in Russia, licensing in broadcasting is now largely...

A decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 29 November 2007 (# 1700-r) approved a Concept for the development of TV and radio broadcasting in Russian Federation in 2008-2015. This document has been worked out by the high-level Governmental Commission on development of TV and radio broadcasting chaired by Dmitry Medvedev in his capacity of 1st vice-chair of the Government. The Concept states that analogue over-the-air broadcasting remains the only means of access to TV and radio programmes for 88.5 per cent of the population; 11 per cent have access to both over-the-air and cable transmissions,...

On 15 November 2007, Miklós Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, presented his regular report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the organization’s main decision-making body. This was his third and final report of the year. Mr. Haraszti’s presentation began with a commemoration of Alisher Saipov, “a young journalist whose promising career was cut short by an act of brutality”. Saipov, a correspondent with the internationally acclaimed media outlets Ferghana, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, and a founder of an Uzbek-language newspaper, was shot and killed in downtown Osh...

On 24 July 2007, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a statute to amend some legal acts (including the Mass Media Statute, the Criminal Code, the Administrative Code, the Anti-Extremism Statute and others) aimed at increasing liability for extremist activities. The amendments refer directly to the media. Article 4 (“Inadmissibility of Abuse of Mass Communication Freedom”) of the Statute of the Russian Federation “ О средствах массовой информации ” (On mass media) of 27 December 1991, No. 2124-1, was added with the provision that forbids the media from publishing information on the...