Russia wants to legalize software piracy in response to Western sanctions

The Russian Federation is studying the legalization of software piracy to meet the shortage of Western products. If the law is enforced, citizens will no longer be “criminally and administratively liable for the use of illegal software.”

The potential new law is a temporary solution to the sanctions that many Western countries imposed on Russia after the attack on Ukraine. According to the Russian newspaper, Kommersant, who learned about the potential law thanks to an anonymous source, should provide some help to local businesses in this way. The law applies only to programs that are no longer available due to international resistance to Putin’s policies. Also, the copyright owner must be in a country that has imposed sanctions against Russia.

An expert tells Kommersant that legalizing software piracy, on the other hand, can have a very limited positive impact. “Today, the most important software products are offered in the form of subscriptions, whether through the cloud or not.” Since the Russians are denied access to the servers of such services, it will still be impossible in many cases to circumvent this through possible hacking.

Since the Russian attack on Ukraine, many major players in the tech industry have withdrawn from the former country. Among other things Microsoft announced To stop more sales of services and products. Companies such as Meta, Google, IBM, Intel, AMD, Amazon, Apple and other tech giants have implemented a variety of small and large penalties.

The number of companies that rely on services like Windows, Word, and Excel alone is probably huge. For now, on the other hand, many alternatives from Google will still be available in the country Tweakers wrote recently† So it is not clear how many companies would really benefit from legalizing software piracy.