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Comment by punarinta | Hacker News Reader

Oh my, I still see people in the comments who naively think this is a copyright issue. Seriously? 15 years after the alleged event? With physical violence against software developers?

It's only one among thousands of cases when putinists rob successful companies. The world must put more pressure on putinism, because eventually all the stolen resources turn into imprisonments of people in the country and deaths of people in the countries attacked by that putinist machine.

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Perhaps feeding into more conspiracies, yet it's worth to remember the recent law to "isolate" the russian internet from the rest of the world [0].

Securing control over the web server software (indeed popular for solid reasons) plays well into this lockdown objective and yields to the state a product that it would struggle to create on its own otherwise. Think of those failed attempts at creating a "national OS" to break dependence from Western originated Windowses, Linuxes, and macOS alikes.

0: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2019-05-01/new-ru...

Good point, although there would be one fatal flaw on that objective; nginx is open source and can simply be forked (outside Russia).

It can be both a copyright issue and a corruption issue.

Sounds more like trade secrets / breach of contract

Rambler supposedly claimed copyright, so while what you’re saying may or may not be true, it’s certainly acceptable to view this as a copyright issue regardless:

https://twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/1205121533963841536?s...

I am quite sure you are right this is corrupt putinism. Putin's economic system is crony capitalism. The laws mean nothing, it is all a matter of who has political corrections and pays the biggest bribe.

That is why there is so little technological innovation in Russia, in spite of its being a huge developed country with a highly educated workforce (except, of course, for hacking). People with ideas know they will just be stolen, so they either leave them undeveloped or move to another country with real rule of law.

This sentiment is equally true for the west, crony capitalism. I just wish more people would acknowledge that the west is in the same state.

No, that's not true. There is a lot wrong with western capitalism, but it isn't nearly bad as what is going on in Putin's Russia.

Copyright doesn't have to be defended. Until it expires, someone holds it and whoever does has the right to control the licensing.

But this is absolutely a copyright issue! If a company has copyright on something I use, I need a license from them. Now we don't know what Russian courts will decide here, and we also don't know whether courts in other countries would respect that. What could happen as a worst case "robbery" scenario is that the developer is forced to agree they never had copyright!

So whether or not the claim was unjustified, it might become a huge problem not just for the individual developers of Nginx but for everybody distributing it or using it. And that has a lot to do with how copyright works.

Former CEO of Rambler at the time already said that the company had no claim on this and that they had an agreement about this exact issue back when Sysoev was hired. It can't be more clear than this.

I am not sure why this is being downvoted. If a Russian court determines (and/or the developer is forced to agree) that the BSD license was issued by someone who did not own the intellectual property, doesn't that create a significant legal issue for anyone who is using nginx under that BSD license since that license would no longer be valid?

Doesn't the potential for this exact sort of issue point out a flaw in how copyright law works (especially under international law?)

When you say "if a Russian court determines" this sounds like an insult to me. Simply check out how recently lots of people have been convicted for nothing, for a poster, a like, for jogging, for trying to get elected, for a youtube video.

I kindly ask you to stop believing that Russia is a place where unicorns shit with rainbow and courts work. No, they do not. And by not acknowledging putin's terror against us you literally deprive us of a right to become a normal country again one day.

(just in case, I didn't downvote the post above)

I am not claiming anything about the justice or fairness of Russian courts, you are reading far more into my comment than was present. This is precisely why I mentioned that the developer may be forced to agree.

From my understanding of how copyright law works, if the local court determines that who a copyright holder is, international courts are required by treaty to uphold that determination.

But it doesn't matter if the court is just or not. What matters is whether the decision is official. Now, the rest of the world doesn't have to abide by the decision, but whether or not Russian courts are corrupt (they are) they do make decisions and there is sufficient law enforcement to bring those decisions to life.

In America our courts work better, but we still have a lot of improvement. Hopefully your countrh serves as a warning to us and not as a whipping boy.

Russian cangaroo courts determine only one thing: which side has more influence, and rule in favour of prevailing one. The side that can call an FSB raid on an opponent is obviously way more influential.

Source: I'm from Russia.

Russian "court" can "determine" whatever whoever paid the court wants it to "determine". It's not a flaw in the copyright law - it's a flaw in Russia having no real independent non-corrupt court system. You can't fix this flaw by writing different license or signing some different papers.

And yet, copyright is a civil dispute. I’ve never heard of a police raid due to copyright.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay_raid

According to the warrant[1] it seems to be a criminal case.

Anyway, you should read up on the BSA copyright raids. Fortunately they seem to have fallen out of fashion.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AntNesterov/status/12050861295041...

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