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If you don’t want to read whole report just take a look.

Legislation in force before the decision

According to Article 17 of the consolidated version of the Law on Intellectual Property (Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual; ‘TRLPI’) ‘[t]he author has exclusive rights of exploitation of his works regardless of their form and, in particular, reproduction rights …which cannot be exercised without his permission except in circumstances laid down in this Law’, and by the following articles which extend that reproduction right to other holders of intellectual property rights. Article 18 of the TRLPI specifies that reproduction means: ‘the fixation of the work on a medium which enables communication of the work and copying of the whole or part of the work’. In accordance with Article 5(2)(b) of Directive 2001/29, Article 31(1)(2) of the TRLPI provides that works which have already been circulated may be reproduced without the author’s permission for ‘private use by the copier without prejudice to Articles 25 and 99(a) of this Law, provided that usage of the copy is not collective or for profit’.

ASCAP became the first PRO in the world to announce record-breaking revenues of more than $1 billion for calendar year 2014. ASCAP also delivered historic high royalty distributions of over $883 million to its songwriter, composer and music publisher members, up $32.3 million, a nearly 4% increase from 2013. In addition to historical revenues and record breaking distributions to its members, the number of musical performances captured, identified, matched and processed for payment by ASCAP doubled from 250 billion in 2013 to 500 billion in 2014.

According to Vedomosti, such idea has been discussed at the meeting in administration of Russian president. But not only Google was under fire. Other foreign internet companies have been also considered as a target for new taxes. If EU wants more tax revenues from IT companies, why Russia should forget about similar opportunity? At the meeting participants have come to common opinion that Google and Apple certainly don’t pay enough taxes to Russian budget. When Russians buy apps, music or movies in such online store like AppStore, iTunes or GooglePlay, their payments are not imposed in Russia because they buy directly from foreign companies. Google pays taxes much less than Russian Yandex, for example.

In the light of coming copyright reforms in EU the draft impact assessment concerns some important copyright issues. One of them is enforcement.

Pirated material can literally be sent by everybody from everywhere to anybody anywhere. Moreover, infringements of copyrighted content online have become do frequent that they are no longer considered by consumers as illegal or even if illegal, as causing economic harm. At the same time, given that technology allows for almost perfect copies at low cost, piracy has become an even more profitable business. The exclusive rights that are recognised, with the appropriate boundaries, should be meaningful in the online environment, and the tools to enforce those rights should be available. At the same time the framework should guarantee the protection of fundamental rights, namely the right to property, the protection of personal data, the right to privacy and to information as well as the freedom of expression of all citizens.

According to Izvestia, Russian Ministry of Culture proposed “tax remission” for students, pupils, pensioners and people with disabilities. “Tax remissions” could also apply to schools, universities and medical institutions. Telecommunication operators, who must collect “licence fees” from internet users and pay collected sums of money to the accredited collecting society, could independently decide who must pay in a case of use of content in internet. It means, if internet user does not use or download content from or in internet, such user is free from internet tax.

As reported Vedomosti the administration of Russian president dislike the idea of internet tax. The negative review was prepared in response to the proposed amendments to Russian copyright legislation. Proposed internet tax was intended to be collected from internet service providers, about 300 roubles in year for each subscriber. In return of this sum the service provides would receive so called global licence allowing to subscriber to download content from internet without any limits.