The new anti-piracy legislation comes into force on August 1, it will allow copyright holders to get a Russian court to block access to allegedly pirated content as well as hyperlinks to such content.

      According to the new law, all websites hosting pirated films must be included to a state blacklist, which started its work today from collapse after failing to cope with the influx of web surfers.

      The controversial law, which has been dubbed the “Russian SOPA” after its scrapped US analogue, faced a flurry of criticism from the Russian Internet industry over technicalities, which, industry representatives say, will enable rampant abuse. About 1,700 Russian-language websites on Thursday took part in a protest, posting banners against the new blacklist or even going on strike by shutting down their operations for a day.

      Many people in the Internet also sign petitions to roll back the law. The petition published on a government website for grassroots petitions has already gathered 60,000 signatures. It needs to collect 100,000 signatures within a year for for parliamentary review.

      Meanwhile, the first lawsuit under the new law has already been filed. Kino Bez Granits (Cinema Without Borders) film distributor asked the Moscow City Court to take down five movies from the distributor’s catalog uploaded on the social network VK.com. The company's representative said they planned to file more complaints in the future.