Belarus Legalizes Piracy – but Citizens Have to Pay for It

upstart writes:

Meanwhile, the regime is angling to pocket the money owed to rightsholders:

Life just got a whole lot better in Belarus - apparently piracy is now legal as long as the media being stolen is from a country that has been mean to the Eastern European utopia.

Due to its support for Russia's war against Ukraine, Belarus is likewise subject to sanctions by the US, UK and EU governments. Much of the intellectual property that Belarus relies on comes from these spheres of influence and, as we have seen with the huge pullout of software companies from Russia, rightsholders are either no longer able or willing to supply or license their products in Belarus.

But such obstacles aren't a problem when you're [President] Lukashenko, who apparently opted simply to legalize access to pirated movies, music, TV shows and software in a new law [PDF] signed on January 3.

The legislation was spotted by pirate-friendly news outlet TorrentFreak, which reports on the peer-to-peer file sharing protocol BitTorrent (heavily used for piracy) and other copyright and IP issues. In their words:

The law 'On the limitation of exclusive rights to objects of intellectual property' targets rightsholders or collective management licensing organizations representing multiple rightsholders.

If these are from foreign countries "committing unfriendly actions" against Belarus, "which forbade or did not give consent" for lawfully published items of intellectual property to be used in Belarus, their exclusive rights relating to specified product classes will be limited.

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