Press "Enter" to skip to content

Why Russian court refused to consider appeals against permanent blocking of torrents?

In first case Moscow city court refused to consider appeal against permanent blocking of rutracker.org. This court affirmed decision against Dreamtorrent Corp., protecting exclusive rights in literary works. Person did not agree with permanent blocking and filed appeal. The court did not find reasons to consider this appeal. According to article 320 of Russian code of civil procedures decisions, affirmed by court of first instance, can be appealed under relevant rules. Only the party of case (claimant and defendant) or other persons participating in case have right to appeal court decision. Also appeal can be filed by person, even if such person did not participate in case, if the issue in relation to rights or obligations of such person has been resolved by the court in such case. Person, which filed appeal against permanent blocking of RuTracker.org, is not person participating in case. In a court decision of 9.10.2015 the issue in relation to rights or obligation of such natural person has been not resolved by the court. Therefore, under item 4, part 1 of article 135 of Russian code of civil procedures the court returns the appeal back to the person, who have made it, if such person does not have authority to file it.

In other case, movie company “Bazilevs Distribution” Ltd. won the case against certain web-sites. Protecting its exclusive rights in audio-visual works, “Bazilevs” gained permanent blocking of access to certain web-sites including torrenttor.net. “Unesskay” Ltd. being not party of case has filed appeal against decision of the Moscow city court. Item 3 of decision #13 adopted by plenum of Russian Supreme Court of 19.06.2012 “About application by courts of provisions contained in Russian civil procedure legislation regulating consideration of cases in appeal instance” explains, that by virtue of article 13 part 4 and article 320 part 3 of Russian code of civil procedures persons, who do not participate in case, have the right to appeal decision, adopted by court of first instance, only if rights or obligation of such persons are affected by such decision, i.e. the right of such person is restricted, revoked or such person bears certain obligation or has certain right under such decision. If the person, being not party of case or does not participate in case, files appeal, such person has obligation to justify his/her appeal and the court of first instance must consider whether appeal, filed by such person, contains reasons therefor. If the court does not find any reason, it can give reasonable term to correct mentioned defect.

Moscow city court has mentioned that appeal only refers to infringement of rights and interests of person filing appeal and there are no reasons why or how. Therefore, this person must justify appeal taking into account that this person does not upload content on site and does not pre-moderate content generating by users. This person did not provide suitable evidences in order to prove that this person is owner of site. Enclosed with filed appeal document in foreign language is not eligible because it is not accompanied with diploma of person translated this document. Furthermore there are additional formal reasons making filed appeal ineligible for consideration by Russian court.