Yandex may discuss fighting Internet piracy, though use no filters.

    MOSCOW, July 16 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia's major Internet search engine
Yandex is not planning to delete from search results references to pirate
productions.
    Earlier, a letter signed by 13 Russian writers and cultural experts
asked the company's Director General Arkady Volozh to do so.
    "We urge the Yandex Company, a participant in the civilised market, to
join the campaign to protect copyright in the Internet and to launch a
process of deleting from search results references to stolen content,
should a write-owner claim for it," the letter read referring to
experience of Yandex's major competitor - American search engine Google.
    However, the Russian company believes the measures are not effective
and it would be more logical to address claims directly to the Internet
resources, which host pirate content. Yandex does not have a right to
allow or ban or otherwise interfere on its own discretion with use by
third parties of objects of others' copy right, the company's
representative Ochir Mandzhikov tol Itar-Tass. "The Yandex search engine,
like other similar search systems, indexes only open-access information,
and should it be deleted from the source site, it will not be included in
search results." Should Yandex receive a claim on clearly illegal content
placed on the servers, it blocks access to it, he added.
    The company "is open always to a dialogue and will gladly invite
authors involved in order to discuss possible ways of solving the issue of
copyright in the Internet," he continued. "We, just like authors, believe
that only joint effort of all those involved may form up a decision, which
would be to the benefit of all parties."
    A well-known Russian blogger, Anton Nosik, explains the problem is in
the legislation: in the USA anti-piracy laws are straightforward, and the
Google company follows it.
    "The laws regulate not only deletion of content if a copyright claims
for it, but also an option that a resource, which content is affected, may
argue the decision," he writes in his blog. "Russia does not have
regulations of the kind, neither does it have copyright disputes
procedures, where all court practice is based on precedents only."
    Russian search engine have to follow laws of their own country, he
added.
    At the same time, the filters, which Google uses against pirate
references, and on what Russian writers insist, can hardly be called
effective. For example, if you search for a free download of a book by
Darya Dontsova /modern writer/, you receive a huge number of references to
clearly pirate sites, and the note on the bottom of the search results
page reads that in compliance with the USA legislation on copyright, the
company has deleted several /namely, two/ search results from the current