While the British government carefully talks to Moscow on issues of life and death, the US government continues with its negotiations on all things copyright. As previously reported, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab has ensured that intellectual property issues have been high up the agenda in talks between the two nations regarding Russia's ambition to join the World Trade Organisation. With Russia having recently made some top level commitments in the IP domain as part of the ongoing wider trade talks, Schwab has now sent a letter to Russian trade minister German Gref outlining some more specific proposals.
In the letter Schwab proposes the setting up of a 'copyright hotline' so that the two countries can alert each other of any potential 'infringing activity' they become aware of. US officials also want to run a training programme to help the Russians hone their skills in detecting and stopping copyright theft. But perhaps most importantly, the letter sets a 1 Jun 2007 deadline for the Russian parliament to enact tougher intellectual property laws, in particular in relation to collecting societies.
The legislative changes Schwab is most keen to hurry through the Russian parliament are those that would close loopholes which have allowed rogue Russian download platform AllofMP3.com to claim legitimacy in its home country. Although AllofMP3.com itself, as previously reported, is not the worldwide problem it once was now that the major credit cards have refused to do business with them, preventing many people from outside Russia from buying music from the cut price service, industry execs fear that bosses there may be developing some kind of alternative payment system or that other Russian firms may set up similar cut price operations that will exist under the radar for a time. Stricter laws within Russia to stop those firms trading legitimately in the domestic market would limit those risks. Schwab has told Russian officials that they need to "continue to take actions against the operation of websites with servers located in Russia that promote illegal distribution of content protected by copyright or related rights".