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An arbitration court has upheld an appeal by the newspaper against the ruling by a lower court which refused to institute proceedings against for reprinting a number of Vedomosti materials on its website without attributing authorship. However, the court has significantly reduced the punitive damages to be paid to Vedomosti for copyright infringement: instead of the $10.5 million originally sought Vedomosti will receive only $10,500. Vedomosti PR manager has said that the amount of punitive damages is not the main thing. The enforcement of intellectual property rights in Russia is what really matters. The arbitration court rejected a similar counterclaim by RBC, in which the information agency accused the newspaper of plagiarism.
The company Stream-TV has unveiled plans to build a fiber optic backbone network in Krasnodar. By mid-2008, the company will bring Internet connections to all densely populated districts of Krasnodar (southern Russia) with up to 200,000 apartments. The network will provide triple-play services. Its bandwidth will be 1 gigabit per second and will be increased if necessary. By the end of 2007 the company expects to connect over 120,000 apartments. Apart from Internet access, subscribers will be offered 60 cable television channels.
Russian partners of the American blog hosting provider do not know how to communicate with their clients, believes creator Brad Fitzpatrick. In he made a forthright comment about the company SUP, to which SixApart transferred the management of the Cyrillic segment of Livejournal. "I keep telling SUP that they really suck at communication to users, and they know it. They don't want to just do faceless press releases about what's going on, they want a real human with a face doing the messaging, but they haven't picked who that person will be yet..." Eventually Fitzpatrick made his comment unavailable to readers, but his rebuke really hit home in Moscow. Almost immediately a lady by the name of Ania in the , saying that she will answer user's questions "to the best of her ability" and relay their requests to SixApart.
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov has announced that his ministry has issued the necessary documents to allow civilian access to the global navigation satellite system (). Now it will be accessible not only to the military, but also to civilians and commercial entities. With the restrictions out of the way, GLONASS should replace the American GPS system in Russia. The latter is presently a de facto standard system despite a number of legislative restrictions. On December 26 three more satellites were put into orbit, increasing the GLONASS constellation to 17 satellites. Eighteen satellites are necessary to ensure full coverage of Russian territory, and 24 satellites are needed for global coverage.
The Internet publication , which temporarily closed shop after criminal proceedings were instituted against its chief editor Vladimir Rakhmankov, has re-launched after moving to a new web hosting provider. So far the web site is only partially functional, featuring an archive of articles for the years 2001-2006 and news for May 2006. Nonetheless, the article that provoked legal action, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin is referred to as a "phallic symbol", is included in the archive. The proceedings against Rakhmankov were instituted at the initiative of the prosecutor's office, while the presidential administration and the president himself did not come forward with any complaints about materials published by Kursiv. Following this scandal, Rakhmankov had a hard time finding hosting space for his website in Russia, as over the last six months three hosting providers refused to deal with him.
The press service of Basic Element has released an official statement warning of a defamation campaign that may be unleashed against the company, its affiliated structures and its owner Oleg Deripaska. Several domain names have allegedly been registered for just this purpose (deripaska-rusal.com, deripaska-rusal.ru, rusal-deripaska.ru, rusal-deripaska.com , olegderipaska.com), which will be used to disseminate damaging information. The press service of Basic Element has appealed to media representatives, asking them to contact the company's press service to verify any information about the company.
The death of the former FSB officer Aleksandr Litvinenko now draws bets at the Kazakh bookmaking joint . Those eager to make a bundle on the true cause of the tragedy are offered to bet on the supposed assassin as well as on the first person to be charged in the Litvinenko murder case. The bets are on until February 1, 2007. If before this time the Scotland Yard does not press charges against any suspect in Litvinenko's death probe, bets placed on the "no charges will be made" outcome will win. The list of personalities on whom bets may be placed includes Berezovsky, Kovtun, Scaramella, Solonenko, and Lugovoi. Betting limit is around $500. The bet on Berezovsky as the first to be charged carries odds of 50 to 1. Those betting against Berezovsky would collect only two percent of their bets if successful.
The publishing house Afisha Industries attempted to legally stop website from showing advertisements related to the search results for the word 'afisha'('playbill'). The company considers such use of the word 'afisha' unacceptable, since Film.ru and are rival websites. Representatives of Entertime, which owns Film.ru, consider the claims of the publishing house to be unfounded, stating that the word "afisha" originated in the Russian language much sooner than the relevant trademark was registered. It is noteworthy that there is no publication called 'Afisha'. There is the website Afisha.ru and a magazine entitled Afisha. All Entertainments of Moscow". At the same time, Russian laws do not impose any restrictions on the way ads are selected in contextual advertising, but only regulate the use of proprietary brand names in the context of advertisements.
As part of his visit to Krasnoyarsk, Russia's First Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visited a local school where students showcased their own websites and complained about a "severely restricted access to the Internet". Apparently, this stops them from surfing the web as much as they would like to. In fact, this does not prevent students from fully enjoying educational benefits, as Russia has yet to develop its own e-learning programs. Still Dmitry Medvedev promised students Internet access, saying that their schools will be connected in the near future. A month earlier Medvedev visited a school in Tyumen oblast only to see that it did not have functional Internet access. Then promises were also made to the ranking official to get the school online in the immediate future.
Skype has started accepting payments from Russian users of the payment system. As part of its promotion drive, offers one year of free voice mail service to the first 15,000 users to pay for services with Yandex money. This deal may hurt the earnings of the Russian developer of voice communication software , which is promoted through the portal. Mail.ru marketing and PR director Anna Artamonova stated previously that the inconveniences involved in paying for Skype services were an advantage for the Agent whose users can refill their accounts through local banks and payment systems.
