Russia fights sanctions by turning a blind eye to piracy

Several states around the world, including Italy, as well as many companies (including Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, NVIDIA, IBM, Intel and AMD) have decided to fight the invasion of Ukraine by Russia by applying to this last severe sanctions or ending the sale of products and services in the area. To counter this phenomenon, which has a rather impact on the Russian economy, the government is working on a series of measures, including a new mechanism inherent to software licenses, which could be seen as a sort of green light to piracy.



In fact, as reported by colleagues at Bleeping Computer, there seems to be a “unilateral” mechanism that renews expired licenses without requiring the consent of the copyright or patent owner. This will apply if the copyright holder is from a country that has supported sanctions against Russia and only for products with no Russian alternatives.




In practice, this would eliminate the legal repercussions of using pirated software in Russia, even though the state itself has stated that this measure does not constitute a concession to piracy and that copyright infringement is still illegal and punishable by up to six years in prison and fines of up to 500,000 rubles.