Term for torrents or the Lopukhov family case. Judicial precedent for new law enforcement practice
In this trial, charged with the Lopukhov family , we are faced with a very difficult plot. For the first time in Russia, people were convicted of using a torrent tracker and placing links on the Internet.
It is pretty obvious that the subject of the past trial was not a violation of someone’s specific copyright, but modern file sharing technologies. Peer-2-peer technologies have long been a thorn in the eye for large right-sellers who do not want to revise their business schemes for distributing content, and argue that torrents make it impossible for authors to make money on their works.
We know that this case was initiated by engaged investigators (by the way, both investigators who started work on the case have now been dismissed from the investigating authorities) at the suggestion of the largest transnational media corporations that are members of the Russian Anti-Piracy Society (RAPO). Thus, the 301 report of the US Trade Aspects Commission (which is the body of the US Department of State) states that "the United States expresses its approval in connection with the progress of the case related to the criminal prosecution of the site interfilm.ru".
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The entire criminal procedure under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was designed to demonstrate to users and Americanowners of licensors from Hollywood hills that this would be the case with anyone who is caught using peer-2-peer networks for sharing files that are subject to copyright.
Prehistory
The first case of the prosecution of the torrent tracker in Russia began in 2008, when the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, with the suggestion of the Russian Anti-Piracy Society (RAPO), which represents the interests of the world's largest labels and Russian rightholders, initiated a criminal case against unidentified persons in connection with the work http://www.interfilm.ru and http://www.puzkarapuz.ru sites. A criminal case was initiated on the grounds of the commission of an offense under section B, B of Part 3 of Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal use of copyright objects for marketing purposes, committed on a particularly large scale by a group of persons by prior agreement). The investigation of the criminal case, which was committed from the very beginning, lasted 3 years. Since the resource owner identified by a certain citizen under the Apple nickname, as well as other tracker administrators and moderators, were outside the jurisdiction of Russia, the criminal case brought against the spouses Lopukhovy was separated into a separate proceeding from the criminal case filed against unidentified persons. which were charged with placing pre-release works on a tracker and bringing objects protected by copyright to the public by placing films on the Internet.
In December 2011, Russia signed in Geneva a protocol on accession to the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization and became a full member of the WTO. Along with honorary membership and trade preferences, Russia also received additional obligations to protect the intellectual property of the participating countries, provided for by the TRIPS Agreement, which is part of the basic set of documents on the creation of the WTO, which was adopted by the GATT (WTO’s predecessor). was the United States.
Whether this is a coincidence, or the result of the planned actions of the US State Department, but in the same December 2011 the case file with the indictment was received for consideration by the Timiryazevsky court of Moscow, but due to the multiplicity of procedural violations of the rights of the accused, the case was returned to the prosecutor . Then the cost of the violated rights was estimated by RAPO representatives in the amount of more than 38 billion rubles.
Criminal prosecution of Lopukhovs
But the case on the first Russian tracker is not over. This time, it coincided with the process of adopting a new "anti-piracy legislation." After the elimination of some procedural lapses allowed by the investigation, after 1.5 years, the criminal case in 51 volumes was re-directed to the Timiryazevsky court to start the trial. The cost of violated property rights for 29 works this time was reduced and assessed by right holders in the amount of 737 million rubles. In the case of recognition of the Lopukhovs' guilt, each of them can be sentenced to imprisonment up to 6 years for each episode (and each of them has two), as well as a fine of up to 500,000 rubles.
Victims in the case are the US film company in the face of "Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation", "Paramount Pictures Corporation", "Warner Bros, Interteyment Inc.," "Disney Enterprises, Inc.", "Sony Pictures Enterteynment, Inc.", "Universal Studios International BV ”, as well as Russian film companies“ Central Partnership ”LLC, Smeshariki LLC,“ Paradise ”Distribution Film Company LLC,“ Over Thirty ”CJSC,“ Kinocompaniya Luxor ”LLC,“ Cinema Company “STV” LLC, United Multimedia Projects, RAPO .
At the same time, RAPO in the criminal case appears as representatives of the victims, and its employees at the same time as translators, witnesses and experts who estimated the value of the violated rights.
There were many contradictions in the indictment about the volume of films for which the rights were violated, as well as the cost of rights to films, which directly affects the composition of the crime and the determination of the size of the committed act, but despite the defense’s arguments about the return of the case to the prosecutor to remedy the shortcomings, Without the elimination of which it is impossible to make a legal verdict of the court, federal judge Maria Akanova announced the decision to take the case to court and go to the trial stage.
Basically, the entire charge (drawn up on 348 pages), filed against the Lopukhov family, was based on the testimony of RAPO employees, the testimony of witnesses and experts who provided an opinion on the cost of rights, and also on the films seized during searches in the apartment of Lopukhov DVDs and correspondence of spouses in ICQ.
Lopukhovs themselves did not admit their guilt and repeatedly stated that they really were one of the administrators of interfilm.ru torrent tracker and forum for moms puzkarapuz.ru, while Lopukhov was engaged in the description of releases and moderation of content on the site and monitored user activity, however they themselves Movies are not released.
Judicial investigation
The first hearings on the case with the interrogation of the victims showed that the value of the violated rights is determined by the right holders at their own discretion, and the investigative body itself did not carry out any independent verification of the amounts claimed. The court, which is to adjudicate in this case, should give a legal assessment of the multitude of evidence collected in the case and the preliminary investigation made on the guilt of the spouses in the committed act.
During the investigation, the defense drew the court’s attention to other important points.
Bringing to public:
Andrei and Nadezhda Lopukhova are charged with committing a serious crime, expressed in infringement of copyright on a particularly large scale, by a group of persons by prior agreement, using the torrent tracker interfilm.ru and the forum for moms puz-karapuz.ru. At the same time, the placement of links for downloading works on other file sharing sites, such as rapidshare, sendspace, etc., and torrent files with hash data was equal to the placement of works in the public domain. Therefore, the accusation incorrectly concluded that the works were brought to the public.
If we formally approach the content of the legal norm, the use of the work in the form of communicating to the public is defined in such a way that it requires the establishment of two essential circumstances at the same time:
- the ability to access the work by any person (therefore, absolutely everyone, including those who do not have access to the Internet or an idea of ​​how information is downloaded);
- the possibility of access by choice from any location (not all places on Earth provide an opportunity to access the Network, including the individual premises of the “connected” apartment) and at any time.
However, participants in the exchange do not bring the work to the public, because access is "open exclusively to members of the relevant Network, information is always distributed to a limited circle of people."
But even if we interpret this method of use as widely as possible, we’ll see that users chose torrent files for download on their own, absolutely free of charge, which was confirmed by 7 witnesses during the trial. And two witnesses said they went to the site in order to learn about new movies and read reviews.
The cost of violated rights. Income from criminal activity.
The greatest number of questions was caused by the method of determining the value of violated rights, since it was she who influenced the qualification of the alleged action.
Initially, the amount for 29 films was calculated RAPO in the amount of 38 billion rubles. Then the staff of the organization reported an error in the calculations and reduced the amount to 750 million rubles.
The investigation did not in any way verify the declared value, and assessed the damage only according to the representatives of the right holders themselves.
Each victim owner has demonstrated surprising ingenuity in the assessment of violated rights. Thus, the representatives of RAPO derived the average cost of the work, by dividing the total cost of the copyright holder's catalog from the American copyright owner by the number of films from the catalog. For example, the average cost of a title to a film owned by Paramount is $ 4,814,814,815. Paradise Company, also recognized as a victim, in general, apparently, did not have Internet rights in the territory of the Russian Federation, but also assessed its rights to the film “Premonition” by taking from the ceiling the amount of 250,000 rubles, and United Media Projects, which had rights to the film “Grandma Ezhka and others”, considered the cost of rights should be calculated as follows: the cost of watching a single movie on pay cable television (VideoOnDemand) is 40 rubles. To calculate the cost, the amount is reduced to 10 rubles. Considering the potential audience of 550,000 people (where is this audience only in Russia for a paid film order on a TV set ?!), the cost of the rights would be 5,500,000 rubles.
All applications for the defense during the trial for the appointment of financial and economic expertise were rejected. The court found that the investigation carried out a proper assessment of the value of the rights.
Quite interesting was also the conclusion of the charge that the income on e-wallets from donates, VIP accounts and banner advertising was recognized as income from criminal activities for bringing to public information 29 films, despite the fact that the site contained about 20,000 torrents. In addition, at the time of the crime, No. 161- “On the National Payment System” was not adopted, which means that WebMoney was not recognized by electronic money.
Nevertheless, the prosecution proved guilt of the Lopukhovs by the following investigative conclusions:
- In the computers seized from them, popular programs were installed, which were used by them to carry out illegal activities on copying and distributing films, including Adobe Photoshop, Avi Synth, BitComment, Click to Dis, Internet Eplorer, Nero, uTorrent, DVD Encoder, Webmoney Keeper, etc. If you believe the conclusions of the court, the very presence of such programs tells you indirectly that you are a criminal;
“Various CDs and DVDs were found in the Lopukhovs' houses, which were purchased by Lopukhov at various points of sale in the city. The examination established that some of the disks were licensed, and some were not. Obviously, having a movie disc with a movie does not mean committing a crime, because no one forbids a person to love movies and collect them at home. In addition, according to Article 1273 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, he had the right to record them in the memory of computers and on carriers for personal purposes. However, the court agreed with the conclusions of the investigation that this also proves the guilt of the spouses.
- Connecting to the servers of the sites on the day of release of the works proves that it was the Lopukhovs who committed the crimes by posting torrents and links. But let's deal with this. The Lopukhovs themselves do not deny that they used the torrent tracker for personal use to download films and also moderated it. Even if we assume that the Lopukhov computers actually did connect to the Interfilm.ru and puz-karapuz.ru sites, then there is nothing illegal about this, since they used the connection to download various files from the tracker, and not to perform seeding in torrent client, as stated by the investigation. In his testimony, the employee of the provider Alterlan explained that it is impossible to determine from the torrent file who performed the first seeding (download) and who downloaded it.
- Correspondence from ICQ from computers seized in violation of the Code of Criminal Procedure of computers. The defense asked that the evidence be admitted inadmissible, as it was obtained in violation of the criminal procedure law, but like in other petitions, we were denied this.
Contradictions in the case
Among other things, there were a number of other contradictions in the evidence collected in the case.
For example:
- The search in the apartment was carried out with violations. On the inventories of seized items there are no signatures of the defendants, or signatures of witnesses that the defendants refused to sign;
- Four witnesses reported during the trial that during the preliminary investigation of the case they were pressured by the investigators;
- One of the witnesses (and this figure appeared in some protocols) said that he had participated in the inspection of the Age of Digital system unit found in an apartment at ul. Lebedyanskaya, d.21, ap. 41. Files were found on the specified computer, incl. contacts, a file of statistics with a local and global network, files containing films. In this case, the Lopukhovs did not live in this apartment. Who lived in this apartment is unknown.
- In p.42, there is information that the distribution of films through a torrent tracker occurred by a RIPPER user with IP 91.211.80.4 and a Nadezhda user with IP 195.218.170.240. At the same time, the investigation concludes that the Lopukhovs lived in the same apartment and enjoyed access to the Internet under one contract with LLC Aletrlan, therefore it is not clear why the access to the network by both defendants is recorded from different IP addresses.
Defense Position
The prosecution did not prove that:
- it was the Lopukhovs who were on the torrent tracker siders, i.e. the individuals who initiated the process of distributing the copied films;
- The marks received on electronic wallets, were the income from criminal activity. At the same time, there is a lot of information in the case file that it was the income from advertising on the site and paying users for the VIP status and donate status increase. Let me remind you that in total there were about 20,000 hands on the tracker, and not 29 works, which Lopukhov imputed rights violations;
-Lopukhov was the administrator of a domain name, a party to a contract with a hosting provider who provided website hosting services, or carried out work on adding content to the site, and Lopukhov uploaded files to file sharing sites;
- the cost of the violated rights (which directly affects the qualification of the crime) is the amount that the owners themselves determined;
Charge Position
The prosecutor asked the court to find the Lopukhovs guilty, and to give each of them 3 years of real deprivation of liberty in a general regime colony with a fine of 300,000 rubles to the state.
Court sentence:
Judge Maria Akanova of the Timiryazevsky District Court, which, with all due respect, had almost no understanding of file-sharing technologies and peer-2-peer networks (sometimes it even seemed that the words ICQ, IP, domain, hosting, uTorrrent, etc. did not respond to any then in the head of the judge with sense), on 15 October 2013, she ruled that the Lopukhovs were found guilty of the alleged offenses and sentenced to 4 years in prison. The sentence is quite expected, and once again confirms the fact that the Russian investigation is never wrong. At the same time, in order not to aggravate the whole absurdity of such a criminal case, the court showed all the available humanity, imposing a suspended sentence. Thus, the order of theAmerican bosses copyright holders was executed, and the supreme humanism of the Russian justice is shown. Nevertheless, the Lopukhovs suspended sentence of imprisonment turned out to be longer than the defendants in the case of The Pirate Bay.
And this is not the end yet. Ahead still awaits civil proceedings on multi-million lawsuits of 15 injured film companies. Such claims have already been filed by STV and United Multimedia Projects for a total of 15,800,000 rubles.
Conclusion
Lopukhovs can be treated differently. Someone considers them pirates, someone not. Some believe that commercial piracy should be punished, others believe that if release groups do not exist, then tracker and social network users will not be able to get fresh content. I will leave the discussion on the situation of modern copyright legislation outside the scope of this case.
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It is pretty obvious that the subject of the past trial was not a violation of someone’s specific copyright, but modern file sharing technologies. Peer-2-peer technologies have long been a thorn in the eye for large right-sellers who do not want to revise their business schemes for distributing content, and argue that torrents make it impossible for authors to make money on their works.
We know that this case was initiated by engaged investigators (by the way, both investigators who started work on the case have now been dismissed from the investigating authorities) at the suggestion of the largest transnational media corporations that are members of the Russian Anti-Piracy Society (RAPO). Thus, the 301 report of the US Trade Aspects Commission (which is the body of the US Department of State) states that "the United States expresses its approval in connection with the progress of the case related to the criminal prosecution of the site interfilm.ru".
')
The entire criminal procedure under Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was designed to demonstrate to users and American
Prehistory
The first case of the prosecution of the torrent tracker in Russia began in 2008, when the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, with the suggestion of the Russian Anti-Piracy Society (RAPO), which represents the interests of the world's largest labels and Russian rightholders, initiated a criminal case against unidentified persons in connection with the work http://www.interfilm.ru and http://www.puzkarapuz.ru sites. A criminal case was initiated on the grounds of the commission of an offense under section B, B of Part 3 of Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal use of copyright objects for marketing purposes, committed on a particularly large scale by a group of persons by prior agreement). The investigation of the criminal case, which was committed from the very beginning, lasted 3 years. Since the resource owner identified by a certain citizen under the Apple nickname, as well as other tracker administrators and moderators, were outside the jurisdiction of Russia, the criminal case brought against the spouses Lopukhovy was separated into a separate proceeding from the criminal case filed against unidentified persons. which were charged with placing pre-release works on a tracker and bringing objects protected by copyright to the public by placing films on the Internet.
In December 2011, Russia signed in Geneva a protocol on accession to the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization and became a full member of the WTO. Along with honorary membership and trade preferences, Russia also received additional obligations to protect the intellectual property of the participating countries, provided for by the TRIPS Agreement, which is part of the basic set of documents on the creation of the WTO, which was adopted by the GATT (WTO’s predecessor). was the United States.
Whether this is a coincidence, or the result of the planned actions of the US State Department, but in the same December 2011 the case file with the indictment was received for consideration by the Timiryazevsky court of Moscow, but due to the multiplicity of procedural violations of the rights of the accused, the case was returned to the prosecutor . Then the cost of the violated rights was estimated by RAPO representatives in the amount of more than 38 billion rubles.
Criminal prosecution of Lopukhovs
But the case on the first Russian tracker is not over. This time, it coincided with the process of adopting a new "anti-piracy legislation." After the elimination of some procedural lapses allowed by the investigation, after 1.5 years, the criminal case in 51 volumes was re-directed to the Timiryazevsky court to start the trial. The cost of violated property rights for 29 works this time was reduced and assessed by right holders in the amount of 737 million rubles. In the case of recognition of the Lopukhovs' guilt, each of them can be sentenced to imprisonment up to 6 years for each episode (and each of them has two), as well as a fine of up to 500,000 rubles.
Victims in the case are the US film company in the face of "Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation", "Paramount Pictures Corporation", "Warner Bros, Interteyment Inc.," "Disney Enterprises, Inc.", "Sony Pictures Enterteynment, Inc.", "Universal Studios International BV ”, as well as Russian film companies“ Central Partnership ”LLC, Smeshariki LLC,“ Paradise ”Distribution Film Company LLC,“ Over Thirty ”CJSC,“ Kinocompaniya Luxor ”LLC,“ Cinema Company “STV” LLC, United Multimedia Projects, RAPO .
At the same time, RAPO in the criminal case appears as representatives of the victims, and its employees at the same time as translators, witnesses and experts who estimated the value of the violated rights.
There were many contradictions in the indictment about the volume of films for which the rights were violated, as well as the cost of rights to films, which directly affects the composition of the crime and the determination of the size of the committed act, but despite the defense’s arguments about the return of the case to the prosecutor to remedy the shortcomings, Without the elimination of which it is impossible to make a legal verdict of the court, federal judge Maria Akanova announced the decision to take the case to court and go to the trial stage.
Basically, the entire charge (drawn up on 348 pages), filed against the Lopukhov family, was based on the testimony of RAPO employees, the testimony of witnesses and experts who provided an opinion on the cost of rights, and also on the films seized during searches in the apartment of Lopukhov DVDs and correspondence of spouses in ICQ.
Lopukhovs themselves did not admit their guilt and repeatedly stated that they really were one of the administrators of interfilm.ru torrent tracker and forum for moms puzkarapuz.ru, while Lopukhov was engaged in the description of releases and moderation of content on the site and monitored user activity, however they themselves Movies are not released.
Judicial investigation
The first hearings on the case with the interrogation of the victims showed that the value of the violated rights is determined by the right holders at their own discretion, and the investigative body itself did not carry out any independent verification of the amounts claimed. The court, which is to adjudicate in this case, should give a legal assessment of the multitude of evidence collected in the case and the preliminary investigation made on the guilt of the spouses in the committed act.
During the investigation, the defense drew the court’s attention to other important points.
Bringing to public:
Andrei and Nadezhda Lopukhova are charged with committing a serious crime, expressed in infringement of copyright on a particularly large scale, by a group of persons by prior agreement, using the torrent tracker interfilm.ru and the forum for moms puz-karapuz.ru. At the same time, the placement of links for downloading works on other file sharing sites, such as rapidshare, sendspace, etc., and torrent files with hash data was equal to the placement of works in the public domain. Therefore, the accusation incorrectly concluded that the works were brought to the public.
If we formally approach the content of the legal norm, the use of the work in the form of communicating to the public is defined in such a way that it requires the establishment of two essential circumstances at the same time:
- the ability to access the work by any person (therefore, absolutely everyone, including those who do not have access to the Internet or an idea of ​​how information is downloaded);
- the possibility of access by choice from any location (not all places on Earth provide an opportunity to access the Network, including the individual premises of the “connected” apartment) and at any time.
However, participants in the exchange do not bring the work to the public, because access is "open exclusively to members of the relevant Network, information is always distributed to a limited circle of people."
But even if we interpret this method of use as widely as possible, we’ll see that users chose torrent files for download on their own, absolutely free of charge, which was confirmed by 7 witnesses during the trial. And two witnesses said they went to the site in order to learn about new movies and read reviews.
The cost of violated rights. Income from criminal activity.
The greatest number of questions was caused by the method of determining the value of violated rights, since it was she who influenced the qualification of the alleged action.
Initially, the amount for 29 films was calculated RAPO in the amount of 38 billion rubles. Then the staff of the organization reported an error in the calculations and reduced the amount to 750 million rubles.
The investigation did not in any way verify the declared value, and assessed the damage only according to the representatives of the right holders themselves.
Each victim owner has demonstrated surprising ingenuity in the assessment of violated rights. Thus, the representatives of RAPO derived the average cost of the work, by dividing the total cost of the copyright holder's catalog from the American copyright owner by the number of films from the catalog. For example, the average cost of a title to a film owned by Paramount is $ 4,814,814,815. Paradise Company, also recognized as a victim, in general, apparently, did not have Internet rights in the territory of the Russian Federation, but also assessed its rights to the film “Premonition” by taking from the ceiling the amount of 250,000 rubles, and United Media Projects, which had rights to the film “Grandma Ezhka and others”, considered the cost of rights should be calculated as follows: the cost of watching a single movie on pay cable television (VideoOnDemand) is 40 rubles. To calculate the cost, the amount is reduced to 10 rubles. Considering the potential audience of 550,000 people (where is this audience only in Russia for a paid film order on a TV set ?!), the cost of the rights would be 5,500,000 rubles.
All applications for the defense during the trial for the appointment of financial and economic expertise were rejected. The court found that the investigation carried out a proper assessment of the value of the rights.
Quite interesting was also the conclusion of the charge that the income on e-wallets from donates, VIP accounts and banner advertising was recognized as income from criminal activities for bringing to public information 29 films, despite the fact that the site contained about 20,000 torrents. In addition, at the time of the crime, No. 161- “On the National Payment System” was not adopted, which means that WebMoney was not recognized by electronic money.
Nevertheless, the prosecution proved guilt of the Lopukhovs by the following investigative conclusions:
- In the computers seized from them, popular programs were installed, which were used by them to carry out illegal activities on copying and distributing films, including Adobe Photoshop, Avi Synth, BitComment, Click to Dis, Internet Eplorer, Nero, uTorrent, DVD Encoder, Webmoney Keeper, etc. If you believe the conclusions of the court, the very presence of such programs tells you indirectly that you are a criminal;
“Various CDs and DVDs were found in the Lopukhovs' houses, which were purchased by Lopukhov at various points of sale in the city. The examination established that some of the disks were licensed, and some were not. Obviously, having a movie disc with a movie does not mean committing a crime, because no one forbids a person to love movies and collect them at home. In addition, according to Article 1273 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, he had the right to record them in the memory of computers and on carriers for personal purposes. However, the court agreed with the conclusions of the investigation that this also proves the guilt of the spouses.
- Connecting to the servers of the sites on the day of release of the works proves that it was the Lopukhovs who committed the crimes by posting torrents and links. But let's deal with this. The Lopukhovs themselves do not deny that they used the torrent tracker for personal use to download films and also moderated it. Even if we assume that the Lopukhov computers actually did connect to the Interfilm.ru and puz-karapuz.ru sites, then there is nothing illegal about this, since they used the connection to download various files from the tracker, and not to perform seeding in torrent client, as stated by the investigation. In his testimony, the employee of the provider Alterlan explained that it is impossible to determine from the torrent file who performed the first seeding (download) and who downloaded it.
- Correspondence from ICQ from computers seized in violation of the Code of Criminal Procedure of computers. The defense asked that the evidence be admitted inadmissible, as it was obtained in violation of the criminal procedure law, but like in other petitions, we were denied this.
Contradictions in the case
Among other things, there were a number of other contradictions in the evidence collected in the case.
For example:
- The search in the apartment was carried out with violations. On the inventories of seized items there are no signatures of the defendants, or signatures of witnesses that the defendants refused to sign;
- Four witnesses reported during the trial that during the preliminary investigation of the case they were pressured by the investigators;
- One of the witnesses (and this figure appeared in some protocols) said that he had participated in the inspection of the Age of Digital system unit found in an apartment at ul. Lebedyanskaya, d.21, ap. 41. Files were found on the specified computer, incl. contacts, a file of statistics with a local and global network, files containing films. In this case, the Lopukhovs did not live in this apartment. Who lived in this apartment is unknown.
- In p.42, there is information that the distribution of films through a torrent tracker occurred by a RIPPER user with IP 91.211.80.4 and a Nadezhda user with IP 195.218.170.240. At the same time, the investigation concludes that the Lopukhovs lived in the same apartment and enjoyed access to the Internet under one contract with LLC Aletrlan, therefore it is not clear why the access to the network by both defendants is recorded from different IP addresses.
Defense Position
The prosecution did not prove that:
- it was the Lopukhovs who were on the torrent tracker siders, i.e. the individuals who initiated the process of distributing the copied films;
- The marks received on electronic wallets, were the income from criminal activity. At the same time, there is a lot of information in the case file that it was the income from advertising on the site and paying users for the VIP status and donate status increase. Let me remind you that in total there were about 20,000 hands on the tracker, and not 29 works, which Lopukhov imputed rights violations;
-Lopukhov was the administrator of a domain name, a party to a contract with a hosting provider who provided website hosting services, or carried out work on adding content to the site, and Lopukhov uploaded files to file sharing sites;
- the cost of the violated rights (which directly affects the qualification of the crime) is the amount that the owners themselves determined;
Charge Position
The prosecutor asked the court to find the Lopukhovs guilty, and to give each of them 3 years of real deprivation of liberty in a general regime colony with a fine of 300,000 rubles to the state.
Court sentence:
Judge Maria Akanova of the Timiryazevsky District Court, which, with all due respect, had almost no understanding of file-sharing technologies and peer-2-peer networks (sometimes it even seemed that the words ICQ, IP, domain, hosting, uTorrrent, etc. did not respond to any then in the head of the judge with sense), on 15 October 2013, she ruled that the Lopukhovs were found guilty of the alleged offenses and sentenced to 4 years in prison. The sentence is quite expected, and once again confirms the fact that the Russian investigation is never wrong. At the same time, in order not to aggravate the whole absurdity of such a criminal case, the court showed all the available humanity, imposing a suspended sentence. Thus, the order of the
And this is not the end yet. Ahead still awaits civil proceedings on multi-million lawsuits of 15 injured film companies. Such claims have already been filed by STV and United Multimedia Projects for a total of 15,800,000 rubles.
Conclusion
Lopukhovs can be treated differently. Someone considers them pirates, someone not. Some believe that commercial piracy should be punished, others believe that if release groups do not exist, then tracker and social network users will not be able to get fresh content. I will leave the discussion on the situation of modern copyright legislation outside the scope of this case.
. interfilm.ru, -, 21 - . , - , , , , , , . .
, :
1. - , ;
2. .
, — - , .
, , , , , . « » -, .
, , , , - , .
, , , , , , .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/197874/
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