On 1 May 2017 the President of the Russian Federation signed
Federal Law No. 87-FZ on Amendments to the Federal Law on
Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection
and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation which enters
into force on 1 July 2017 (the "Law").
As the note accompanying it states, the Law was introduced to
the State Duma because there is a regulatory gap in the legal
regulation of activities of entities providing Over-the-Top (OTT)
services, namely, of online cinemas and other web resources
engaging in the digital distribution of video content and targeted
at Russian consumers, and the Law is intended to bridge that
gap.
According to the Law, an audiovisual service is defined as a
site, information system or computer program that is used to form
and (or) organize the distribution on the Internet of a group of
audiovisual works to which access is provided for a fee and/or for
watching advertisements targeting Russian
