Copyright On Guard Of Fraudulent Elections And Hunger-Strike in Astrakhan 29 Days Long

Earlier, i wrote how copyright laws were used to threaten and blackmail people into paying lots of money in Russia,  but I bet you’ve never imagined that copyright laws also could be used to defend fraudulent elections (i.e. when a winning candidate has won not because he was chosen). Well, in Russia somebody had just invented precisely that way to use the copyright laws AND and there’s a guy on a hunger-strike for 29 days against it – all to no use.

The whole story had been on the Internets for nearly a month now, but only yesterday official federal TV channels acknowledged that anything was happening at all (if it’s not on federal TV – it hadn’t happened). A city of Astrakhan (capital of a region with the same name) recently held mayor elections. Among the candidates were a guy named Oleg Shein, ex-state deputy known for some good deeds and helping people, and a guy from United Russia party. What this has to do with copyright, you might ask. Well, just bear with me, I’ll get to that part after explaining the backstory.

Before and during the said elections there were countless violations of election rules and pure thuggery – Shein’s ads were destroyed, his supporters were attacked by unknown thugs with baseball bats, members of Disctict Electoral Commission (who register people coming to vote during the elections and count the votes afterwards) received letters of resignation with blank dates – and that’s only a small part of what had been done to ensure the United Russia guy would win. Consequently, during the actual elections no one gave a rat’s ass what the real votes were, someone just swapped the real votes with fake ones.

Shein had lost, of course, then tried to do something over it, failed miserably and went on a hunger-strike. But, there’s a catch - during the Presidential elections, government had done an unprecedented move and bought web cameras for ALL polling station in the whole country, so people could watch in real time what is happening and that there are no fraud or misconduct in progress. Polling stations in Astrakhan had these cameras installed too. And during the mayor elections they still were in place, but online translation was turned off as soon as the voting started. What actually had happened and if it was recorded is unknown, but there should be records, right? And if there are none, the mere fact of the records being absent would prove that there was a fraud going on during the voting. So, Shein filed for the videos to be given to him. Now, guess what kind of an answer he got?

That the video records of Astrakhan’s elections are intellectual property of Ministry of Communications, thus being under copyright laws – with all the resulting consequences of that - and Shein can fuck off with all of his demands, hunger-strikes and appeals to  court. The guy had kept his hunger-strike for 29 days straight, supported by Astrakhan’s population (people held several public meetings in his support), but all he gets are polite versions of “go fuck yourself, we ain’t showing nothing”.

True Democracy, what can i say. You think that’s immoral? That’s not even the latest scandal, just wait for one of the next posts!