Rahachou: civil activist Dznianis Dashkevich fined 3 million rubles

On 12 October the Rahachou City Court took a decision on the law suit of the district’s newspaper “Svabodnaye Slova” against the creator of a local web-site Dzianis Dashkevich.

The court found him guilty of author’s rights violation (Article 9.2 of the Administrative Code) and punished him with a fine of 3 million rubles.

The newspaper’s claim came down to the web-site vrogacheve.ru allegedly reposting information from the district newspaper’s web-site violating the copyright, BelaPAN informs.

“The articles, to which the district’s newspaper referred to in the claim, - were the official reports of police and the district’s hospital saying that last winter six dwellers of Rahachou got frostbites. Though the court didn’t prove where the official report appeared first – on the web-site of the district’s newspaper of our web-site. They didn’t manage to prove in the court that I was an administrator of the web-site vrogacheve.ru. The official report is not an object of author’s rights. Can’t an ordinary person read and disseminate a police report?”, – the civic activist pointed out.

He added that the web-site vrogacheve.ru doesn’t have the contentious articles anymore as already in February the web-site was hacked and all the articles disappeared.

At the same time, the newspaper “Svabodnaya Slova” keeps flinging mud on him in its recent publications, calling him a “hoax fighter”, “opp”, “clown” and so on, suggests that he “may be imprisoned seriously and for a long time” or “may get scared and flee abroad”. The activist is going to file a lawsuit on these facts too.