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> According to the information of the newspaper Kommersant, Rambler Group demands through the court to “stop the spread of pirated broadcasts” and to recover a

> According to the information of the newspaper Kommersant, Rambler Group demands through the court to “stop the spread of pirated broadcasts” and to recover a record 180 billion rubles. (about $ 2.9 billion) from the world's largest streaming service Twitch. Yulianna Tabastaeva, a representative of Twitch in court, announced that the requirements of the Rambler Group, in addition to paying compensation, also include a complete blocking of the Twitch service for users in Russia. We are fully into the state/corporate/mafia extortion and authoritarian phase of the internet and technology. I miss the old internet that was anti-authoritarian and still growing creating value. The internet and technology around it has peaked, value creation phases nearly complete, value extraction phase underway. Next step a breakup of the worldwide united internet union and more value extraction along borders and corporate tribes requiring bribes.

zozbot234 7y ago
This is not about 'authoritarian control' whatever that might mean, it's "just" about copyright enforcement - specifically, media rights over English Premier League matches, of all things. Claims that some comparatively-trivial copyright violation accounts for "billions of dollars" in economic impact are nothing new.
- drawkbox 7y ago
  This particular case is mostly corporate but also authoritarian. It presses and seeds the point that Russia wants their own internet and there be these type of deals having to be made to access it. [1] China already does this type of "business", controlling their markets. The internet is also regularly shut down by authoritarians in their respective states. We are definitely in the authoritarian phase of the internet. As the internet took over markets, politics and more, it was inevitable. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/vladimir-putin-wants-his-own-internet https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/vladimir-...
  - bencollier49 7y ago
    If you'd bought the rights to rebroadcast an incredibly popular series of sporting events, and no-one was subscribing because they were watching the stuff online for free, what would you do about it?
    - drawkbox 7y ago
      I don't approve of extorting all of Twitch for one companies corporate copyrights including blocking Twitch across an entire country. This is a scorched earth corporate authoritarian/oligopoly approach. Not a fan of these types of blanket Moltov cocktail extortions that affect 99% of all people using the service normally. Also, it strangely targets a property of a large American company that they do not like in Amazon. This is opening up for more of this only. Probably the beginning of fully blocking streaming on foreign sites as there is lots of money in it now. Basically the China market control approach that helps again with the authoritarianism. There is copyright / pirating all over the internet in every country. Would you approve of shutting it all down because someone is leeching? Ultimately people that watch streams / pirate means that the original product is either badly priced, inaccessible or the user can't afford it anyways. Most people that can afford these things will pay eventually. There have been studies on piracy being mostly people that would never pay at that time. Further, in the end pirates turn into people that buy more content [1]. Easily accessible products that are easier than piracy use the market to reduce it. [2] Tuning products to stop a small percentage of users will lead us to tyranny of markets and horrible product experiences for paying customers which will then either pirate [3] or tune out. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-pirates-tend-to-be-the-biggest-buyers-of-legal-content https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-... [2]https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/02/26/2233257/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/02/26/2233257/studies-keep... [3] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/piracy-is-back.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/piracy-is-back.html
      - zozbot234 7y ago
        > Would you approve of shutting it all down because someone is leeching? Well, maybe I wouldn't. What about copyright holders and their exclusive licensees though? We know what their positions are on this particular issue.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  > This is not about 'authoritarian control' whatever that might mean, it's "just" about copyright enforcement It is in Russia, it's more like an excuse to block Twitch. Sberbank, the parent company of Rambler, is also a Kremlin's right hand and has been doing this kind of stuff since forever. For example, this was the company to which Yandex was forced to sell the controlling "golden share".
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    This seems like a common knee-jerk reaction lately - if something comes out of Russia, it must be the government doing its authoritarian stuff. But you are reading it backwards. Russian government doesn't need any "excuse" to block something - if they want to, they just go ahead and do it. Instead, it is rambler that is using its connections to government as a credible threat to extort bigger settlement. > Sberbank, the parent company of Rambler Sberbank is not the parent company of rambler, they have recently bought 46.5%.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Why would the Moscow want to prevent gaming fans from seeing their countrymen do well in fortnight or whatever? What's so suspicious about greedy actions by a company working for a corrupt regime that you suspect an ulterior motive?
    - zzzcpan 7y ago
      Russian government more than once voiced concerns over gamers doing things online without government involvement and control. Sberbank is not just greedy business, it's greedy only when it serves Kremlin.
  - LessDmesg 7y ago
    Sberbank is also behind recent Nginx extortion raids.
    - gdy 7y ago
      Any proof?
- paganel 7y ago
  Yeah, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, after all reddit was pretty quick in getting rid of /r/soccestreams as soon as the PL people got on their backs, it looks like Twitch is in the same position. It so happens that in this case the people forcing them to fall into line and respect copyright law are close buddies with some bad people in Russia, but nobody is perfect. After all the money for those players' Lamborghinis [1] has to come from somewhere. [1] https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/wayne-rooney-carlos-tevez-lamborghini-17380470 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/wayne...
glandium 7y ago
We are fully into the state/corporate/mafia extortion and authoritarian phase of the internet and technology. And even Google is playing this game, cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800968

zozbot234 7y ago

This is not about 'authoritarian control' whatever that might mean, it's "just" about copyright enforcement - specifically, media rights over English Premier League matches, of all things. Claims that some comparatively-trivial copyright violation accounts for "billions of dollars" in economic impact are nothing new.

drawkbox 7y ago
This particular case is mostly corporate but also authoritarian. It presses and seeds the point that Russia wants their own internet and there be these type of deals having to be made to access it. [1] China already does this type of "business", controlling their markets. The internet is also regularly shut down by authoritarians in their respective states. We are definitely in the authoritarian phase of the internet. As the internet took over markets, politics and more, it was inevitable. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/vladimir-putin-wants-his-own-internet https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/vladimir-...
- bencollier49 7y ago
  If you'd bought the rights to rebroadcast an incredibly popular series of sporting events, and no-one was subscribing because they were watching the stuff online for free, what would you do about it?
  - drawkbox 7y ago
    I don't approve of extorting all of Twitch for one companies corporate copyrights including blocking Twitch across an entire country. This is a scorched earth corporate authoritarian/oligopoly approach. Not a fan of these types of blanket Moltov cocktail extortions that affect 99% of all people using the service normally. Also, it strangely targets a property of a large American company that they do not like in Amazon. This is opening up for more of this only. Probably the beginning of fully blocking streaming on foreign sites as there is lots of money in it now. Basically the China market control approach that helps again with the authoritarianism. There is copyright / pirating all over the internet in every country. Would you approve of shutting it all down because someone is leeching? Ultimately people that watch streams / pirate means that the original product is either badly priced, inaccessible or the user can't afford it anyways. Most people that can afford these things will pay eventually. There have been studies on piracy being mostly people that would never pay at that time. Further, in the end pirates turn into people that buy more content [1]. Easily accessible products that are easier than piracy use the market to reduce it. [2] Tuning products to stop a small percentage of users will lead us to tyranny of markets and horrible product experiences for paying customers which will then either pirate [3] or tune out. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-pirates-tend-to-be-the-biggest-buyers-of-legal-content https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-... [2]https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/02/26/2233257/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/02/26/2233257/studies-keep... [3] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/piracy-is-back.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/piracy-is-back.html
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      > Would you approve of shutting it all down because someone is leeching? Well, maybe I wouldn't. What about copyright holders and their exclusive licensees though? We know what their positions are on this particular issue.
zzzcpan 7y ago
> This is not about 'authoritarian control' whatever that might mean, it's "just" about copyright enforcement It is in Russia, it's more like an excuse to block Twitch. Sberbank, the parent company of Rambler, is also a Kremlin's right hand and has been doing this kind of stuff since forever. For example, this was the company to which Yandex was forced to sell the controlling "golden share".
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  This seems like a common knee-jerk reaction lately - if something comes out of Russia, it must be the government doing its authoritarian stuff. But you are reading it backwards. Russian government doesn't need any "excuse" to block something - if they want to, they just go ahead and do it. Instead, it is rambler that is using its connections to government as a credible threat to extort bigger settlement. > Sberbank, the parent company of Rambler Sberbank is not the parent company of rambler, they have recently bought 46.5%.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  Why would the Moscow want to prevent gaming fans from seeing their countrymen do well in fortnight or whatever? What's so suspicious about greedy actions by a company working for a corrupt regime that you suspect an ulterior motive?
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    Russian government more than once voiced concerns over gamers doing things online without government involvement and control. Sberbank is not just greedy business, it's greedy only when it serves Kremlin.
- LessDmesg 7y ago
  Sberbank is also behind recent Nginx extortion raids.
  - gdy 7y ago
    Any proof?
paganel 7y ago
Yeah, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, after all reddit was pretty quick in getting rid of /r/soccestreams as soon as the PL people got on their backs, it looks like Twitch is in the same position. It so happens that in this case the people forcing them to fall into line and respect copyright law are close buddies with some bad people in Russia, but nobody is perfect. After all the money for those players' Lamborghinis [1] has to come from somewhere. [1] https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/wayne-rooney-carlos-tevez-lamborghini-17380470 https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/sport/football/wayne...

glandium 7y ago

We are fully into the state/corporate/mafia extortion and authoritarian phase of the internet and technology. And even Google is playing this game, cf. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21800968