The Volgograd Regional Court overturned the decision to recognize the extremist song «Kill the Beggars!» group «Porn Movies». The group's manager Alexander Rusakov told Mediazone about this.
The prosecutor's office's claim to ban the song will again be considered in the Dzerzhinsky District Court of Volgograd, noted in the Network Freedoms human rights project, whose lawyers represented the musicians.
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Pornofilmy Group 🎸 in an hour, performs in the Volgograd Regional Court with the song “Kill the Poor” (cover of Kill the Poor by the Dead Kennedys ,1980). Our lawyers will convince judges and prosecutors that there is no extremism in culture, irony and sarcasm. Volodya Kotlyarov himself is the soloist! pic.twitter.com/fdJ6jAg2LW
— Pavel Chikov (@pchikov) February 17, 2022
In September 2021, a court ruled that Porn Films' cover of the 1980 satirical song Kill the Poor by the American punk band Dead Kennedys was extremist. The prosecutor's office referred to the examination, which found in the song “a negative assessment of a group of people <…> poor, needy, needy and low-income Russians.”
At that time, the lawsuit was considered without representatives of “Pornofilmy”, they were not warned about the meetings. Since the ban of the track violates the rights of the group, the musicians had to be found and involved in the process, lawyer Stanislav Seleznev explained to Mediazone.
Don't kill beggars. The group «Pornofilmy» appealed the blocking of their punk cover on Dead Kennedys
«Porn Films» to the appeal in the regional court also requested an alternative examination of the song. Linguists noted that «the lyrical hero of the song should be distinguished from the real one, and the listener will clearly see the 'stage mask' that the author puts on when performing.»
“The conclusions of the specialist, as well as the court, are based solely on the analysis of the text, the interpretation of the words and expressions used by the author, without taking into account the satirical nature of the song. However, the text of the song allows us to make an unambiguous conclusion about the absence of such an orientation of materials. In her conclusion, the specialist put a false equivalence between the call for violent actions and freedom of creativity,” lawyer Narek Hakobyan said at the meeting.
After the song was added to the register of extremist materials of the Ministry of Justice in November, Volgograd police drew up a protocol against the former head of the city Navalny's headquarters Evgeny Kochegin for publishing the song in the Telegram channel (Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).