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On February 20, 2012 the Ministry of Communication
and Mass Media of the Russian Federation hosted the first meeting of the working
group created in pursuance to item 1 of the list of instructions of the President
of the Russian Federation dated 31 May 2011 ¹ 1547 (Order of the Ministry of Communication
and Mass Media of the Russian Federation ¹10 dated 13 January 2012).
The line-up of the Working Group (WG) includes representatives of the Research Centre for the Private Law under the
President of the Russian Federation (Alexander
Makovskiy, Elena Pavlova), the Supreme
Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation, the Committee on Culture of the State Duma of
RF, law firms in the sphere of intellectual property (LLC «Office of Legal
Affairs «Omega», law firm «SALANS»), internet-industries
(JV «Rostelecom», Russian Electronic Communication Association, Mail.Ru Group),
copyright owners (NCO «National federation of phonograms’ producers»), users of
free licenses (NCO «Wikimedia Ru», Russian
corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano), Association of Web Publishers), mass
media (FSUE ÐÀÌÈ «RIA
Novosti») and others. On behalf of IIS the working group was represented by Yuri
Hohlov, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Alexander Evtyushkin, Head of
Directorate for open content development, Svetlana Vorozhbit, expert legal
adviser on intellectual property, Luiza Rizmanova, Director of the Department
of International Cooperation and Public Relations.
In the course of the meeting participants discussed
main trends in the work of the Group – preparation of the draft amendments to
the Civil Code of RF related to use of free licenses in Russia, as well as
possible adaptation of international free licenses to Russian legislation. The Head of the WG, Director of the
Department of State Policy in Mass Media of the Ministry of Communication and Mass
Media of the Russian Federation, Ekaterina Larina presented the background and
reasons for creating the Working Group. It was also noted that on August 1,
2011 the Ministry of Communication and Mass Media of the Russian Federation, following
the instruction of the President of RF, submitted to the Presidential
Administration a suggestion on amending the civil legislation of Russia aiming
at preservation the authors’ ability to represent their creations on terms of
free licenses to unlimited set of people (similar to Creative Commons, GNU
FDL). These suggestions were accepted but not taken into consideration in the
draft federal law “On amending parts 1,2,3 and 4 of the Civil Code of the
Russian Federation, and particular legislative acts of the Russian Federation”,
which was prepared by the Council under the President of RF for Codification
and Enhancement of the Civil Legislation and submitted to the President of the
Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev on January 31, 2012 in accordance with instruction of the
President of the Russian Federation dated October 17, 2011. The draft federal
law was published on the web-site of the Research Centre for the Private Law (www.privlaw.ru).
Head of Department of intellectual property legislation of the Research Centre for
Private Law Elena Pavlova informed participants of the meeting that the draft
will be reviewed in the second reading, and amendments to part 4 of the Civil
Code of RF worked out by WG might be included in the agenda for review and
further addition to the new version of the draft federal law.
Participants of the meeting agreed on necessity to conduct parallel work of WG
on amendments to the Civil Code of RF related to use of free licenses, and on
participation in the development of the new version of licenses ÑÑ 4.0. IIS representatives expressed readiness
to prepare translation and scientific editing of the draft licenses ÑÑ version 4.0,
which will be presented for public discussions in the end of February-beginning
of March 2012. Besides IIS proposed to increase the membership of the WG and include
representatives of the Ministry of Science and Education because CC licenses
can be successfully used for creation of open educational resources and
exchange of open scientific data.
Based on the outcomes of the meeting
participants of the WG were proposed to submit to the Ministry of Communication
and Mass Media of the Russian Federation suggestions to the WG action plan, and
to comment on suggestions made by the Russian Electronic Communication
Association in regards to making amendments to the Civil Code of RF where
related to use of free licenses and presented in a form of a working document
at the meeting. The next meeting of the
WG will be held in the beginning of March 2012. |
