Three major labels are suing Russian social network vKontakte, claiming that the company has deliberately fostered "large-scale" music piracy on its service.
Sony Music Russia, Universal Music Russia and Warner Music UK have filed separate lawsuits in the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court, working with locla industry body NFMI and global organisation the IFPI on the cases.
The labels claim that vKontakte, which has 143m registered users globally, including 88m within Russia, is storing a large catalogue of music uploaded by its users, and has refused to strike licensing deals with the rightsholders.
"VK's music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large scale," said IFPI chief executive Frances Moore in a statement.
"We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time. We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced."
The IFPI believes that the widespread availability of downloadable music on vKontakte is harming licensed digital music services in Russia, including local players Yandex and Trava, and global services iTunes and Deezer.
The IFPI's most recent figures show Russian recorded music revenues of just 2.2bn roubles (£37.3m) in 2013, putting it outside the top 20 countries in the body's global rankings.
vKontakte declined to comment on the lawsuits when contacted by The Guardian, on the grounds that it has not yet received the claims filed by the labels.
vKontakte has been a thorn in the side of the music industry for some time. In November 2011, US industry body the RIAA was labelling the site as a "notorious market" for piracy that was "specifically designed to enable members to upload music and video files, hundreds of thousands of which contain unlicensed copyright works".
This week's lawsuits are not the first time vKontakte has been taken to court for facilitating copyright infringement, however.
In February 2012, the company lost a case brought by Russian music firms SBA Publishing and SBA Production, with the verdict upheld by the Russian appeals court in May that year. A few months later, vKontakte was fined in another copyright infringement case, before being refused leave to appeal in November 2012.
The IFPI claims vKontakte has refused to tackle the issue of copyrighted music stored and shared through its social network, but the company has said otherwise in the last year. In June 2013, local news sites reported that a number of songs by global artists including Justin Bieber, the Rolling Stones and Adele were being removed by vKontakte.
In December 2013, founder Pavel Durov claimed that vKontakte was willing to take down music in response to requests from labels. "If some music companies wish their content to be deleted from VK, we, as always, are willing to comply with their wish," he told TechCrunch.
"On the other hand, we are also ready to seek mutually beneficial ways to monetise their content. This year we managed to find such a solution for video content and we are optimistic about the audio section of VK as well."
In March this year, reports suggested that vKontakte was preparing to introduce "content identification, which will be used to monitor and promptly delete published content protected by copyright", although these plans have not dissuaded the major labels from launching their legal action.
The lawsuits come at a sensitive time for vKontakte. Its founder Pavel Durov resigned earlier this week, citing pressure from the site's Kremlin-linked owners since its ownership structure changed in 2013. The previous year, Durov had refused to close down groups on vKontakte that were organising protest marches against Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
In April 2013, vKontakte's offices were searched by investigators, as a fund belonging to oil mogul Ilya Shcherbovich acquired 48% of the company. Then, in January 2014, Durov sold his shares in the company to telecoms executive Ivan Tavrin, whose company MegaFon is controlled by Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov – who already owned 40% of vKontakte, and has close ties to the Kremlin.
"The freedom of action of the chief executive in managing the company has considerably decreased. It has been harder and harder to remain with those principles on which our social network is based," wrote Durov in a statement posted on his own vKontakte page earlier this week, as he resigned.
More recently, vKontakte has been in the news for offering a job to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden after he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, as well as being criticised for hosting homophobic groups like Occupy Paedophilia which used its social network to lure gay men to venues where they would be attacked.
Durov may now focus on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app startup that he launched with brother Nikolai, which is based in Berlin. The app recently added 5m new users in a single day following the announcement that Facebook was buying rival WhatsApp.
