Stanislav Ignatov, Head of Kiwi.kz. ©Roza Essenkulova
A number of largest Kazakhstan’s Internet portals (Kiwi.kz, Namba.kz, Nur.kz, Gameworld.kz) intend to establish a special association with a view of developing the Kazakhstan’s sector of the Internet. They have already applied for state registration, Tengrinews.kz reports. Reps of the portals told about it at a press-conference following the media buzz caused by Shavkat Sabirov, Vice President of the Internet Association of Kazakhstan (IAK), who suggested punishing all those running pirated content on their Internet portals “at three snaps” (two warnings followed by forced elimination of the Internet resource). Stanislav Ignatov, Head of Kiwi.kz, a video hosting platform, believes “if we start eliminating one and all web sites with some pirated content (music, films, games, etc), the Kazakhstan’s sector of the Internet will die”. Azamat Omarov, Commercial Director of the Yvision blogging service, believes it will take time for the Kazakhstan’s segment of the Internet to develop. “Kaznet has been there for only 15 years, and it started developing actively only 3 years ago. Elimination of web-sites offering some pirated content is not a solution. Kaznet is only popular with 15% of Internet users in Kazakhstan, with the other 85% giving preference to the Russian segment of the Internet. In case of clean-up operations in Kaznet users will shift to the Russian segment”. According to Ignatov of Kiwi.kz, the number of unique visitors to Kazakhstan’s web-sites Namba.kz, Nur.kz, Kiwi.kz, Gameworld.kz stands at 400 000, whereas Russia’s Mail.ru, VKontakte.ru attract up to 3 million of Kazakhstan’s users. He also cited Internet advertisement figures for 2010: the on-line advertisement market in Kaznet was estimated at $8.8 million ($5 million in 2009). He believes the “three snaps method” wilkl have an adverse impact on this segment as well. Earlier owners of some Kazakhstan’s Internet portals wrote an open letter to Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Massimov requesting him to introduce 2-year-long moratorium on any changes into intellectual rights-related legislation applicable to the Internet. “Efforts to combat violations of IPR in the Internet should be simultaneous across the CIS (post-soviet states). Unilateral “clean-up” operations within the Kazakhstan’s Internet space alone will bring about noncompetitiveness of the latter”, Stanislav Ignatov and Rauan Maemirov (owners of Kiwi.kz), Vassily Ulyanov (Nur.kz), Kamshybek Kasymbekov (Namba.kz) and Vladislav Tolmachev (Gameworld.kz) stated.
A number of largest Kazakhstan’s Internet portals (Kiwi.kz, Namba.kz, Nur.kz, Gameworld.kz) intend to establish a special association with a view of developing the Kazakhstan’s sector of the Internet. They have already applied for state registration, Tengrinews.kz reports.
Reps of the portals told about it at a press-conference following the media buzz caused by Shavkat Sabirov, Vice President of the Internet Association of Kazakhstan (IAK), who suggested punishing all those running pirated content on their Internet portals “at three snaps” (two warnings followed by forced elimination of the Internet resource).
Stanislav Ignatov, Head of Kiwi.kz, a video hosting platform, believes “if we start eliminating one and all web sites with some pirated content (music, films, games, etc), the Kazakhstan’s sector of the Internet will die”.
Azamat Omarov, Commercial Director of the Yvision blogging service, believes it will take time for the Kazakhstan’s segment of the Internet to develop. “Kaznet has been there for only 15 years, and it started developing actively only 3 years ago. Elimination of web-sites offering some pirated content is not a solution. Kaznet is only popular with 15% of Internet users in Kazakhstan, with the other 85% giving preference to the Russian segment of the Internet. In case of clean-up operations in Kaznet users will shift to the Russian segment”.
According to Ignatov of Kiwi.kz, the number of unique visitors to Kazakhstan’s web-sites Namba.kz, Nur.kz, Kiwi.kz, Gameworld.kz stands at 400 000, whereas Russia’s Mail.ru, VKontakte.ru attract up to 3 million of Kazakhstan’s users.
He also cited Internet advertisement figures for 2010: the on-line advertisement market in Kaznet was estimated at $8.8 million ($5 million in 2009). He believes the “three snaps method” wilkl have an adverse impact on this segment as well.
Earlier owners of some Kazakhstan’s Internet portals wrote an open letter to Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Karim Massimov requesting him to introduce 2-year-long moratorium on any changes into intellectual rights-related legislation applicable to the Internet.
“Efforts to combat violations of IPR in the Internet should be simultaneous across the CIS (post-soviet states). Unilateral “clean-up” operations within the Kazakhstan’s Internet space alone will bring about noncompetitiveness of the latter”, Stanislav Ignatov and Rauan Maemirov (owners of Kiwi.kz), Vassily Ulyanov (Nur.kz), Kamshybek Kasymbekov (Namba.kz) and Vladislav Tolmachev (Gameworld.kz) stated.