Hi! My name is Sergii Petrov. I am the Head of the Press service of Wikimedia Ukraine, a regional chapter of the WMF.

Primarily, I sent this letter at legal@wikimedia.org, but Jay Walsh asked me to send it to this list.

I'm writing to inform you that The State Service of Intellectual Property of Ukraine prepared a bill about blocking web-sites for copyright infringement (in part similar to a Russian bill about blocking web-sites). It obliges hosting providers and possibly even ISPs to block web-sites without a court ruling when a copyright infringement is reported, and the procedure is very flawed. It is solely based on an affirmation from a person or entity who saw on the web-site the copyright infringement. It is a pity, but according to the bill notaries will be able to certify screenshots. It is very dangerous for Internet in Ukraine and, we think, for Wikipedia in particular.

So, Wikimedia Ukraine with the help of Ukrainian Wikipedia community compiled an official letter to the State Office of Intellectual Property of Ukraine with their concerns about the bill and sent it to the Office on Friday 10th of January.

We will inform you about situation in Ukraine with this bill. We hope that Wikimedia Foundantion will support us.

We sent a press release for Ukrainian media and made a draft on the Wikimedia blog that will be posted soon.

The text of the statement of Wikimedia Ukraine in attached file.

Thank you for your time.

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