Russia mulls making software piracy legal and patent licensing compulsory

The Register ^ | Tue 8 Mar 2022 | Thomas Claburn

[Salman]

Russia is considering handing out licenses to use foreign software, database, and chip design patents, and legalizing software copyright violations, in response to sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.

According to Russian business publication Kommersant, a government document drafted on March 2 outlines possible actions to support the Russian economy, which faces extensive trade restrictions from the US, the UK, and Europe, and business withdrawals.

With companies like Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP halting sales (though not ending service to existing customers), Russia has instituted tax breaks for technology firms and conscription deferments for IT workers to retain its core resources and talent during the conflict.

The March 2 document, Kommersant says, proposes a compulsory license for patented software, databases, and chip designs, and contemplates abolishing criminal and administrative liability for software license violations, but only for rights holders from countries that support the sanctions against Russia.

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[VAFreedom]

what? all my pirated games are already from russia via fitgirl(not a girl)

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

All my bootleg movies come from .ru.

[Red Badger]

Just like China?....................

[BipolarBob]

Games? Movies? For research purposes only (and quality control) how much would copies of these set a fellar back?

asking for a friend

[moehoward]

Hardly a surprise. Every one of these woke corps closing stores in Russia are kidding themselves. McPutins will be open within the week.

[MercyFlush]

So do I have to pay for all the hacking tools I stole from the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg? Some of them are quite useful even if I need to fix a few bugs.

[Trump20162020]

If companies aren’t going to release movies/video games in Russia, what do you expect?

[VAFreedom]

why pay for disney+ or netflix...etc when you can catch everything and the latest flicks from...soap2day.sh/enter.html

[BiglyCommentary]

So they’re going to become the Chinese.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

I watch a bootleg streaming site. $0. Just the cost of internet and a VPN.

[BipolarBob]

Not for me. I’d get caught and join the Jan. 6 protesters. Too risky for me.

[BusterDog]

Smart. Make your own iPhones. Just copy the tech, make your own. Russian iPhones will be cheaper in China and over all the developing world.

[oldbrowser]

He is stealing a country. The theft of patents means little.
We are headed towards law of the jungle. We can all play by the same lack of rules. Every country or group of countries for themselves.

[bobcat62]

Russia keeps their IT workers on the job. We put ours on the unemployment line.

[pepsi_junkie]

I know Russia is already terrible about intellectual property protection but in all fairness to them, when you need to download Top Secret US weapon system blueprints you can’t find them in Russia, you have to go through China to get those.

[minnesota_bound]

I am ok with this as long as it is Adobe software.

I reinstalled Windows 7 on my desktop pc this past weekend and installed the ScanSnap software (scanner) which includes Adobe Acrobat XI (it came out in 2013. Bought scanner in 2015) The scanners price was much higher because of the Adobe software.

I typed in the serial number from the cd and Adobe said it looks like I do not have a internet connection, try again.
I even turned off my anti virus and malware protection but same message.

I look up the message and Adobe has all sorts of activation issues with their products and no easy way to resolve. One way I tried as suggested by their support site was to FAX <— yeah FAX them and they will respond in 72 hours <— yeah 72 hours!! FAX...

The issue is they turned off the activation servers!! but do not say so up front. If I want I can always get their monthly rentable software that requires Windows 10. No way to renting software. The last time I installed was more then a year and a half ago and it worked then.

I have now bought FoxIt Editor PDF Pro for at $179 https://www.foxit.com/pdf-editor which is so much better then Adobe’s. Easy to edit pdf file, just like a text file or Word doc file.

So steal away Adobe products : )

ScanSnap - great for scanning photos quickly and saving as jpgs.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMO/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1