The cybercrime unit within Ukraine’s Interior Ministry added another notch to its belt last week when it seized the servers of and shut down the popular online viewing and file sharing site My-Hit.ru, which it said was violating copyright laws in sharing pirated material and promoting copyright infringement on the part of others.
Some 50 servers, 15 pieces of computer and network equipment, as well as almost $62,000 in cash
were recovered by the cybercrime unit from My-Hit.ru offices in Kyiv and
Cherkasy on April 19, according to a statement
on the ministry’s website. The cost of the seized equipment is estimated at about
Hr 1.5 million ($184,343).
Criminal charges have been filed against
administrators of My-Hit.ru under article 176
(Infringement of Copyright and Related Rights) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for the
illegal distribution and broadcasting of audiovisual works.
The Kyiv Post was not able to contact anyone
associated with My-Hit.ru for comment. But in a statement posted on VK.com, a
popular Russia-based social media site similar to Facebook, someone associated
with the site outlined the events.
The message reads:
“Yes, indeed, the server was seized by law
enforcement agencies of Ukraine. Accordingly, all information can not be
restored. More than 20,000 materials, 5 years of hard work, can be destroyed
with a single complaint.
“At this time, the priority is not the recovery
of resources, and the decision of a more serious problem, which has not written
a lot higher.
“In the near future the resource will not be
restored.”
My-Hit.ru was created in 2008. According to
recent reports, more than 20,000 full-length movies, cartoons and television
shows were uploaded and available for online viewing and download before last
week’s bust.
While the site’s servers were located here in
Ukraine, about 60 percent of its users were in Russia, according to the online
tracking service cy-pr.com. Ukrainians made up about 10 percent of total users.
According to the website Alexa.com, which ranks
the popularity of websites by the amount of traffic to them, my-hit.ru is the
78th most popular site in Russia. It is also popular in Armenia, where it is
the 40th most popular website.
The company Internet Copyright Management,
which protects the interests of copyright holders on the internet, in early
2012, ranked My-Hit.ru the world’s fifth most popular pirate site.
My-hit.ru was closed after a complaint by the
law firm Vindex, which represents the interests of software developers such as Adobe
Systems, Graphisoft, Nav N Go, teleagentstva Russian Report media groups 1 +1,
StarLightMedia, Media Group Ukraine and NTU.
Vindex’s Paul Mykolyuk told Kommersant
newspaper that his firm had repeatedly asked administrators of My-Hit.ru to
remove content belonging to its clients, but to no avail. In turn, the firm was
forced to report the site to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he said.
This is not the first time Vindex has taken
action against file sharing websites. In March of this year Interior Ministry
officials raided the offices of Freenet ISP, seizing servers with pirated
content.
In October of last year the company accused
Divan.tv of copyright infringement, however the site is still operational.
Also at the request of Vindex, the Interior
Ministry opened a criminal case against Ukraine’s largest file hosting website,
ex.ua. The authorities’ raid of the ex.ua offices last year made headlines and
led to street protests in support of the file-sharing website.
Kyiv Post staff writer Christopher J. Miller can be
reached at [email protected], or on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.
