State Duma approves bill blocking mirror sites in 2nd reading

MOSCOW, Jun 16 (PRIME) -- Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, approved on Friday in the second out of three mandatory readings a bill blocking copies of piracy Web sites, so-called mirror sites.

Leonid Levin, head of the State Duma’s information policy committee, said earlier that proposals by the Culture Ministry to mute such sites without a court decision were declined during the preparation of the bill for a second reading.

The bill bans copies of the Web sites access to which was limited by the Moscow City Court following repeated and illegal disclosure of information containing objects of authors’ rights and/or adjacent rights, or information required to obtain them.

An order to limit access to such mirror sites is stipulated as well.

Search engine operators must stop to produce data on domain names or pages with access limited by court.

If approved by parliament and signed by the president, the initiative will come in force on October 1.

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