Issue #1098 (64), Tuesday, August 23, 2005

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MuzTV Gives Up ‘Masyanya’ Fight

By Galina Stolyarova

Staff Writer

Muz-TV, Russia’s home-grown clone of MTV, has withdrawn an appeal against the verdict of Moscow’s Savyolovsky municipal court to close down the channel’s popular prime time talk show “V gostyah u Masyani” for its illegal use of the aminated character, Masyanya, created by St. Petersburg animator Oleg Kuvayev.

Kuvayev owns the copyright for the character and the use of images of Masyanya without a legitimate copyright agreement is illegal.

On June 14 the Moscow Arbitration court demanded that Muz-TV stop broadcasting the program, which was produced without permission from Kuvayev as required by law.

But the channel had obtained permission for the use of Masyanya from a company which possessed the copyright at the time the agreement was made.

Kuvayev’s copyright battles date back to March 2002, when the artist signed a contract with Moscow-based limited liability company “Masyanya,” led by producer Grigory Zorin, which offered Kuvayev a range of promotion and distribution services. Zorin then granted Muz-TV the right to use the popular character legally.

But Kuvayev didn’t receive any royalties from the deal as Zorin’s company left him without any control over Masyanya through a series of skillful manipulations. It took Kuvayev more than a year to regain his copyright.

In August 2004, Kuvayev won a court case which returned to the animator the copyright of the character. The verdict of Savyolovsky district court in Moscow then ruled that “any commercial use of Masyanya’s image without securing a permission from Oleg Kuvayev, is illegal.”

The channel considered appealing the decision but altered course this week.

“Having revised the situation once again, the channel took a decision to withdraw its appeal,” a statement from Muz-TV’s press-office reads. The statement said the motive behind the recall of appeal is the channel’s great respect for the reputation and high professional achievements of Masyanya’s creator Kuvayev.

“V gostyakh u Masyani” was a popular talk show, hosted by a slightly altered but recognizable rendition of Kuvayev’s vivacious, single-tooth provocative creature, frequently described as Russia’s answer to “Beavis and Butthead.” In the program Masyanya interviewined A-list celebrities such as writer Darya Donstova, pop-singer Shura and the rock-band Agatha Christie.

The channel hasn’t been fined for copyright violation, so neither Kuvayev personally, nor his studio will recieve any kind of compensation.

“We didn’t demand any financial compensation from the popular channel. We weren’t after their money,” a “victory note” on Kuvayev’s official website, www.mult.ru reads. “All we wanted was to shut down that program.”

In an interview with Novye Izvestia on Monday, Kuvayev appreciated the channel’s decision but stressed the move would have looked better if it had been made before the discouraging verdict.

“I am grateful to hear about what they call my ‘high professional achivements’, which, by the way, didn’t stop the channel causing huge moral damage to the artist, the studio and the audiences for more than a year,” the newspaper quotes Kuvayev as saying. “Regrettably, the channel’s management hasn’t acknowledged the scale of what they did and no apologies have been made.”