Legal Category: Legal

tablet

E-books now 5% of market, but pirates still dominate

Special to East-West Digital News by Oleg Kouzbit in partnership with Marchmont News / May 14, 2012

Russia’s e-book market has been growing at a robust CAGR of 120% over the past three years, swelling from 11 million rubles (just under $370,000) in 2008 to 135 million rubles ($4.5 million) in 2011, Russia’s Federal Press and Mass Communication Agency reports in its overview of the national book market’s progress and trends for this year.

According to the report, the top players in the market are LitRes and IMobilco, controlling an aggregate 74% of the domestic e-book trade. LitRes, the leader with a 54% market share, also boasts the majority ownership of copyright for distributing Russian-language books on the Russian-language Internet.

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Federal Antimonopoly Service initiates proceedings relating to SMS spam

By Leonid Zubarev, CMS Russia / Apr 30, 2012

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation for the City of Moscow has initiated proceedings against the furniture company Shatura for distributing advertisements via SMS without users’ consent (SMS spam).

During the check, the Antimonopoly Service established that Shatura had violated the article of the Federal Law on Advertising which forbids the distribution of advertisements via telecoms networks, including phone-based ones, without the prior consent of the users.
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E-commerce study

Government hotline to combat consumer rights violations in online retail

Part of a Global Perspectives Series on Russian e-commerce offered by East-West Digital News / Apr 24, 2012

The Public Chamber, a state organization which aims to organize and enhance the relationship between Russian citizens and government, plans to open a hotline next month to field consumer complaints about violations of consumer rights by e-commerce sites.

This initiative was announced by Anatoly Kucherena, a lawyer who heads the Public Chamber’s commission on citizens’ security. “I received several complaints from customers who hadn’t received refunds in spite of the poor quality of the items they had bought online,” the Russian news agency quoted Kucherena as saying.

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Discount site client database leaked to crooks for $6,700

Special to East-West Digital News by Oleg Kouzbit in partnership with Marchmont News / Apr 13, 2012

Baltinfo.ru, a St. Petersburg online portal, citing a police source, reported that earlier this year an employee of a popular discount site was caught red-handed trying to sell the company’s client database for 200,000 rubles (less than $6,700).

The sale of the USB flash drive, which contained sensitive client information, was arranged to occur at a popular restaurant in downtown Moscow. The police operation was conducted in early February but it then took authorities seven weeks to initiate prosecution.

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SMS spammers could face five years in prison

By East-West Digital News, Marchmont News / Mar 06, 2012 / 1 Comment

SMS spam should be considered a medium-gravity crime, which implies punishment of up to five years in prison, suggested participants at a meeting last week which brought together Russian regulation and surveillance agencies as well as leading mobile operators.

Telecom regulator Roskomnadzor also suggested changing the rules for providing telecommunication services and content.

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Presidential election 2012

Cease-fire in political hacking on Election Day

By Elena Mikhaylova, Adrien Henni, East-West Digital News / Mar 05, 2012

In contrast to the massive hacker attacks that took place during the parliamentary election on December 4th and over the following weeks, no notable incidents were reported yesterday when Russian voters reelected Vladimir Putin as their president – a sign perhaps of the increased legal risks and political cost for the parties involved.

Using computer hackers in political battles had become almost common place over the last few years in Russia – the country where the largest number of DDoS attacks originated in the second half of 2011, according to a recent report from Russian Internet security provider Kaspersky.

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Vkontakte.ru too “passive” with copyright infringement, says arbitration court

By East-West Digital News / Feb 22, 2012

Last week, the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court offered long-awaited explanations about the decision it issued in January of last year regarding an alleged copyright infringement involving Vkontakte.ru, the leading social network in Russia. The Gala Records record label had accused Vkontakte of having illegally offered online copyrighted recordings by the Russian band ‘Infinity’.

Vkontakte claimed it only provided web hosting services for its users and therefore could not be liable for any copyright violations.

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LTE

2012 expected to be Russia’s breakthrough year for LTE

Special to East-West Digital News by Sergey Maltseff, ICT Online / Jan 31, 2012

After years of strategic discussions, long bureaucratic processes, and unsuccessful attempts to launch 4G, 2012 promises to be the breakthough year for LTE deployment in key areas of Russian territory.

While three players – Scartel, Rostelecom and Osnova Telecom – had received their own frequencies for LTE deployment by the end of 2011, additional frequencies are expected to be obtained in 2012 by Rostelecom and by mobile operators MTS, VimpelCom, and MegaFon. Due to the complexities of frequency conversion, however, only Scartel, as along with MTS and MegaFon in Moscow, are likely to make new LTE networks available for commercial use before the end of 2012. Continue reading

Cybercrime

Microsoft accuses Russian engineer of creating Kelihos botnet

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Jan 26, 2012

Earlier this week, Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit, made the findings of its Kelihos botnet investigation public, accusing Andrey Sabelnikov, a Russian engineer from St Petersburg, of having created the bot code and conducted the operation.

In the original complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in September, Microsoft alleged that Dominique Alexander Piatti and John Does, who owned a cz.cc domain, used it to register subdomains operating the Kelihos botnet. The charges against the original defendants were dismissed one month later in exchange for their cooperation, which led to identifying the creator of the malware.

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Pavel Vrublevsky

Vrublevsky freed after 6 months in jail

By Elena Mikhaylova, East-West Digital News / Dec 30, 2011

Pavel Vrublevsky was released last week after spending 6 months in Lefortovo prison in Moscow, following his arrest in June of 2011 for organizing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the website of Assist, a competitor of his company, Chronopay.

A leading Russian online payment processing company, Chronopay processes almost half of all Visa and MasterCard online transactions in Russia and partners with such companies as Britain’s MoneyBookers, Spain’s Caixa Catalunya, the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Pago, and China’s Alipay.

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