Moscow court rules that Russia’s most-popular torrent tracker must be blocked permanently

Earlier today, a Moscow court ruled that Russian Internet providers must block the country’s most popular torrent-tracker website, RuTracker. According to the court order, the website will be blocked forever, regardless of what actions RuTracker takes in the future (unless it wins an appeal in court).

The publisher Eksmo brought the suit against RuTracker, which refused to remove hyperlinks to pirated copies of several of its books. A spokesperson for the court told RIA Novosti that the books in question were written by Darya Dontsova and Alexander Gromov. 

The court’s ruling is enforceable only after it takes effect, which is either after an appeal is considered, or after a period of 30 days.

RuTracker held a vote among its users to determine if it should delete the links targeted by Eksmo. At the time of this writing, more than 976,000 votes were submitted, 67 percent of which supported the option, “don’t delete it—let them block the site, and we’ll find ways to circumvent it.”

Russia’s National Federation of the Music Industry is also seeking the permanent blocking of RuTracker. A decision on its suit against the website is still pending.

Legislation allowing Russian courts to ban websites permanently has been in force since May 1, 2015. The law applies to websites and online services guilty of repeated copyright infringements. A Moscow court first utilized the law in mid-September, when it blocked several Web resources, including the popular torrent tracker Rutor.org.