Singer and composer Yuri Loza filed a lawsuit against Channel One with a demand to block access to the release of the Voice show with a cover of his song. This is the first requirement in judicial practice for a federal channel to block content due to music in a TV show. If a singer wins, the case could create a new practice for copyright holders to protect the rights to songs.
Singer, composer and songwriter Yuri Loza filed a lawsuit against Channel One JSC on May 13 to block illegal content, it follows from the Moscow City Court’s card index. No review date has been set yet. As follows from the text of the lawsuit (“Kommersant” has it), the singer claims that the TV channel violated his rights to the song “Plot” (written by Yuri Loza in 1982), using it in one of the issues of the “Voice” program, which aired in October 2020, and then it was published on the channel’s website in three versions. The inclusion of the song in the TV show was not agreed with the author, he claims and demands to recover compensation from Channel One – 4 million rubles. for copyright infringement and 1 million rubles. for moral damage. A representative of Channel One did not respond to Kommersant’s request.
As the general director of Semenov & Pevzner (representing the plaintiff) Roman Lukyanov told Kommersant, this is the first requirement in judicial practice for a federal channel to block content because of music in a TV show. “Previously, in such situations, the blocking procedure was not used. The court has already satisfied the requirements for preliminary interim measures and ordered Roskomnadzor to block links to the TV show, ”Roman Lukyanov points out. The controversial issue of “Voice” is indeed blocked on one of the links, but is available on the site via others.
According to Roman Lukyanov, the TV channel did not react to the pre-trial claims of the plaintiff and refused to conclude a license agreement with him: “TV channels lived in reality, when copyright holders did not require content blocking if music was contained inside a complex object, a TV show”. If Mr. Loza wins, he will prove that not only a pure copy of the content can become a reason for blocking, the lawyer added.
Claims for compensation to federal channels appear in arbitration often and are usually associated with popular song and dance projects where phonograms are used, says Sergei Zuikov, patent attorney, managing partner of Zuikov & Partners. The migration of such proceedings from arbitration to the Moscow City Court can be useful to rightholders because the latter is usually more inclined to satisfy the requirements for interim measures, says Anatoly Semyonov, deputy chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Committee on Intellectual Property. Whether the practice of filing such claims with the Moscow City Court will continue depends on the outcome of this case, added Sergei Zuikov.
Yuri Loza has real prospects of winning the case, even if the TV channel has an agreement with the Russian Authors’ Society (RAO), Anatoly Semenov predicts: “All practice in this category of disputes is based on the fact that the agreement with RAO only gives the right to broadcast or by cable, but not to publicizing on the Internet. ” Sergei Zuikov also considers the likelihood of recovery of compensation and a ban on the use of the song high, but he considers the claim for compensation for moral damage to be controversial. “For me, the recovery of compensation already includes compensation for non-pecuniary damage. I do not exclude that the court will take a similar position, ”the lawyer said.
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