Well, this is getting interesting. Last week, we noted that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, alone among the other G8 leaders, questioned today's copyright laws, suggesting that they did not fit with the times, and pointed out that these century-old laws don't seem to fit with today's internet. Glyn Moody now points us to the news that Medvedev appears to be going even further than just condemning today's copyright laws. He's now looking to adjust Russia's copyright laws in the other direction:

In a statement released on the Kremlin's website on Thursday, Medvedev instructed the country's communications ministry to draw up amendments "aimed at allowing authors to let an unlimited number of people use their content on the basis of free licensing."

The proposed copyright system is on a par with the initiative launched by Creative Commons, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that has created copyright licenses that allow owners to share their content for free with certain restrictions.


This could be interesting. To be honest, I'm not sure why such things need to be baked into copyright law (as we've seen, it appears to work with it being built on top of existing copyright law - though, some question the legality of certain CC licenses). However, what will be most interesting is to see how copyright industry lobbyists and US politicians react to this. I imagine that such a move will show up in the industry... er... I mean the USTR's annual Special 301 report as evidence as to why Russia doesn't "respect" copyright law enough.

But would that really be true? Does building a more flexible, more modern copyright law really mean a lack of respect for copyright? Why wouldn't it mean a healthy respect for building a system that matches better with the times - rather than the industry's kneejerk reaction to just keep ratcheting up the punishments, enforcements and coverage of copyright?