Practice of Applying Law on Advertising

Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the legal regulation of the current advertising business in Russia. The subject-matter of the research has become the components of advertising left in the author’s opinion unsettled in the Federal Law "On Advertising" enacted in 2006. The sources analyzed include the European Convention on Transfrontier Television, the law On Advertising, Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation, judgements of arbitration courts, normative acts of executive and judicial bodies, press-releases of private companies and text books. The article notes that the drawback of the current legislation is the removal of a ban which used to exist on interrupting movies on TV with advertisements more frequently than 15 minutes. Currently, the law regulates the length of commercial breaks but not their frequency. The author stresses the irrelevance of the decision to reject the limitations on advertisements on the channels available by applying decoding equipment. The article draws the attention to the imperfection of a number of articles in the law On Advertising as some companies producing alcoholic drinks advertise their products as umbrella brands. The legislation keeps silent on clear and justified criteria for regulating a topical question, i.e. what is advertisement and how to measure the volume of advertisement in Mass Media. The author reminds that the drawbacks of the law is that the differentiation between advertising and information content has been assigned to supervisory and judicial bodies, which may represent a corruption element in the activity of such bodies. As video and TV are announcing new products, the law of 2006 requires changes.