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20 Whittier L. Rev. 825 (1998-1999)
The Structure of the Russian Entertainment Industry

handle is hein.journals/whitlr20 and id is 835 raw text is: THE STRUCTURE OF THE RUSSIAN ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY ELENA MURAVINA** To adapt a familiar slogan, Russia is a big country, someone must entertain it. Before Perestroyka, entertainment, as everything else, was centralized. Goskino and the Union of Cinema looked after the theatrical film industry. The Committee of Television and Radio supervised broadcasting. Other agencies took care of publishing and newspapers. Intellectual property rights did not merit much attention. Russia joined the Universal Copyright Convention in 1973, but did not join the Berne Convention until 1995. In practice, that meant that everything produced in Russia prior to 1973 was in the public do- main, available for the Western users. As to Russia, the officials there acted as if everything in the world was in the public domain. Thus, free borrowing from Western films, TV programs and literature was com- monplace. The protection of intellectual property rights was within the jurisdiction of the All-Union Copyright Agency (VAAP), a state agency authorized to negotiate and affect sales with foreign entities. It did so pursuant to model contracts, which were etched in stone - no one had the authority to change even one word in these sacred docu- ments. VAAP was also charged with collecting royalties and distribut- ing them to authors. Even foreign royalties were distributed to authors in Russian currency, less a hefty tax withheld by the state. * This is the edited text of remarks presented at How the East Was Won: Legal Aspects of the Entertainment Business in Russia. This conference was held in Los Angeles on Feb. 21, 1998. ** Associate, Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. J.D., Loyola Law School (1992); M.A., University of Southern California (1983); B.A., Moscow State Univer- sity (1976). Ms. Muravina practices intellectual property and enterainment law.

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