Russian Minister for Communications Leonid Reiman said last week every Russian school would be provided with licensed sofware by the next academic year start. Financing conditions include so-called 'license payment' not exceeding 787 rubles (about $30) per year. During several years the program would be financed both by state and local governments, further by locals only. A bid for technical support providers might be announced in May. The contract totals 3,7 bln rubles. The software would be supposedly ordered without any bid. And supposedly it is about Miscrosoft even though Reiman was an active speaker in recent open source discussions.

A bill obliging state officials to share any information (except of state/official secret) with citizens on their demand passed its first reading in State Duma. The bill says open information should be provided with document copies either by postal delivery or email. If no response follows the query within 30 days, bureaucrats could be sued for unjustified concealing of information. Although four another federal laws protect people's right for information and oblige authorities to share it, Russia still remains one of the most closed state for its citizens (rated 40th in Kurtzman Group's top-48 governments that lack publicity).

A killing discussion between Russian online leaders occured during 'Internet and Business' conference, held April 19-20 near Moscow. When asked if Google would come and buy everything on the Russian web, Mail.ru CEO Dmitry Grishin answered, "Google's not going to buy, it's going to kill. And Yandex would be its primary victim. After a time there would be a space only for Mail.ru - Google to provide web serch while Mail.ru to remain web service leader".

Arkadiy Volozh, the head of Yandex, reasoned that the question is as old as Russian web. "Google came in, localized its products and gained 11% search traffic. It made none of serious revision on the market. After global players like Yahoo and MSN expand in Russia that would make a competition", he said. Meanwhile sources say, Microsoft is already negotiating with leading online media on content partnership to launch 'Russian MSNBC' on msn.com.

Savva Terentyev, a musician from Syktyvkar, Komi republic, was questionned by city police and undertaken to stay in town. Earlier police visited his apartment and seized his computer. He was accused of 'arousing social discord' after he had commented a post in LiveJournal blog of Syktyvkar's journalist Boris Suranov. In this comment he sweared police workers and suggested 'to burn a policeman a day' as a regular ceremony in every Russian city. Earlier Boris Suranov and few other bloggers from Syktyvkar were taken to regional police offices after an anonymous account on behalf of Komi's head appeared on LJ.

The turnover of digital music content in Russia totals $38,4m in 2006, including $37,7m sales of ringtones and realtones. With this figure cellular networks perform about one third of total legal music sales in Russia, according to recent Intermedia report. Online music stores managed to gain only $193,500 selling legal content (Intermedia estimations based on rightholders' reports). Although the piracy level is still high on Russian web, experts admit that legal music market has been eastablished. "Two years ago the market didn't exist at all. A dozen of legal stores appeared only in 2006, they sell content directly from rightholders or legal distributors", - says Igor Pozhitkov from IFPI Russian office. Andrey Lukinov from Real Records expects the legal sales would reach 40-50% of total online music stores turnover this year.

Softline, a software vendor in Russia and CIS, has acquired a gaming community XboxRussia.ru. The community counts about 2500 users interested in Microsoft game console. With this acquisition Softline plans to launch an online marketplace for licensed games distribution and to offer new services to Russian gaming community.

Russian president signed the amendments into Criminal Code to toughen responsibility for copyright violation. According to the new law pirates could be sentenced up to 5-6 years imprisonement and punitive penalties up to 500,000 rubles. Still there is a strong opinion that changes will only make way for a new kind of mass court business, the same with recent changes in Civil Code.

Copyright section was probably the toughest one at Russian Internet Forum (April 5-7). The main discussion flamed around Civil Code part IV amendments that come into force next year's start. The law actually bans any web publication that was not formalized by a written contract between its author and a publisher. Hardly a few can now boast having such papers so the ocean of suits might be on the way to court. These new amendments contain no record of Creative Commons, GPL or any global open source standards. To make it even worse, Russian law hasn't got any appropriate 'website' definition. Section participants dealing with law explained that in terms of Civil Code website could be seen as 'a computer program' or even 'a database'. Even hyper-links can be treated as 'transport' so the publication of a link to some There were no practical cases though.

The new copyright law changed the perspective for Linux developers as well. It came to the participants of round-table discussion on freeware that international copyright standards like Creative Commons and GPL are outlawed in Russia. However Petr Frolov from LinuxCenter.ru distributing CDs with Linux during said every copy contains 'all required labels of authors and publishers'. Anton Nosik from Sup Fabric resumed how senseless was the whole idea to discuss the right in the Web applied to the country where you may buy a pirate DVD next door to Federal Security Service building. Still the participants of the discussion stayed optimistic and welcomed free browser applications which would ceize the need to buy or download anything.

OpenView Venture Partners and ABRT Venture Fund launched their new investment program "Partnership for Russia". The goal of the joint effort is to identify and invest in the best software & information technology companies in Russia and East-Central Europe. This wasn't their first common initiative here - OpenView and ABRT joint investment in Russian software business totals over $30m. Joint successes include, among others, Aelita Software (sold to Quest Software in 2004 for $115 million), Acronis, and Quintura.

"If you are an entrepreneur with a young, fast growing software company in Russia, we would love to talk to you," commented Andrei Baronov of ABRT. "If you want to learn more about how Ratmir [Timashev, ABRT partner] and I have grown Aelita Software with the help of the OpenView team to an exit of $115 million, give us a call or send us an email!"

Earlier this month another venturer launched its program in Russia - Cisco announced its plans to expand on Russian technology market. To launch the initiative, the company has acquired a share in a leading Russian e-commerce site, Ozon.

Nizhniy Novgorod region authorities negotiate with Intel, Microsoft, HP and IBM about opening their offices in Ankoudinovka technopark. The construction of Ankoudinovka by 2010 is estimated for about $15 bln rubles, where state and regional budgets together provide only 3.1 bln rubles. The technopark occupies 6.2 square kilometres territory in Nizhniy Novgorod suburbs where a business center, technological objects and apartments for staff would be situated. Also it is planned to open a business incubator - a co-project of Ankoudinovka and Nizhniy Novgorod State University. Another Russian 'Silicon Valley' will appear next to Moscow by 2012.