The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine is discussing the possibility of introducing a ban on access to music in Russian on streaming services for Ukrainian users. This is the question was disturbed during the meeting of the subcommittee on the music industry of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy.
During the discussion, it became clear that at the moment there is no clear mechanism for blocking such content, and the streaming platforms themselves refuse to comply with similar requirements of the Ukrainian authorities. At the same time, a petition demanding to ban Russian-language music on such services quickly gathered the necessary 25,000 signatures, which indicates significant public interest in this initiative.
“Our experience of communicating with large platforms is negative. Although we had some kind of response from the companies META and Google. And all we received from them at our request to sign memorandums and begin to effectively clean up the information space is that no large platform is ready to create any separate rules for Ukraine that would go beyond their global rules.” — said First Deputy Chairman of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting Valentyn Koval.
Services such as Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music are considered relatively small platforms and are regulated at national level within the EU through digital services coordinators. According to Koval, Ukraine could improve its sanctions legislation, and then submit the corresponding sanctions lists to European and American authorities.
The representative of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Valeriya Kurakina, emphasized that an appeal to global platforms is possible only if there is an appropriate legal framework or officially imposed sanctions, which will be the basis for limiting content on the territory of Ukraine.
