You're reading: Closing of EX.ua sparks intense cyberwarfare

Authorities shut down main Ukrainian file-sharing website.

In a rare assault on cybercrime, Ukrainian law enforcement on Jan. 31 bowed to Western pressure and closed down the file-sharing website EX.ua.

The controversial website – only accessible to Internet provider addresses in Ukraine – allowed free access to thousands of movies, books and software applications. The problem is that the site flouts international copyright laws in a nation that is considered a world leader in web piracy and disrespect for intellectual property.

In what appeared to be hacker retaliation for the shutdown, official websites started going down, one by one, in a string of cyber attacks on Feb. 1. Those included the official websites of President Viktor Yanukovych, the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Bank of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers and the ruling Party of Regions.

The Interior Ministry, which led the assault on EX.ua, said the site had been under criminal investigation for copyright violation since July.

Prosecutors ordered the domain registrar Imena.ua to close access to ex.ua, while police claim to have confiscated 200 servers that belong to the company with the total capacity of 6,000 terabytes. One terabyte is enough to store 250,000 high resolution (four megabyte) photos or 200,000 MP3 songs.

However, after numerous complaints from Internet users and the shutdown of government websites, law enforcers changed their minds and asked the domain registrar to renew access to the popular file-sharing website. EX.ua representatives said their website could be back online as early as late Feb. 2. Early Feb. 3 EX.ua returned, but the content was not yet accessible. The criminal case remained open.

EX.ua’s resurgence and continued flouting of copyright laws would send a bad signal about Ukraine’s commitment to the international movement to stop digital piracy. The quick about-face “shows that authorities were not ready for such a reaction,” said Maksym Savanevsky, an Internet communications analyst. “If EX.ua becomes accessible online again, it will show that Ukrainian authorities now care most about preventing this online protest [from breaking out] into the streets.”

In 2010, the Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the U.S. recording industry and seeks to protect intellectual property rights, called EX.ua a “pirate heaven” and listed it among top 25 pirate websites in the world.

The police said the website caused at least Hr 180,000 ($22,500) of damage to U.S. software developer Adobe as a result of alleged copyright infringement. The crime is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Interior Ministry raid comes on the heels of a crackdown on an international giant file-hosting service, MegaUpload.com, based in Hong Kong.
EX.ua was one of the most popular websites in Ukraine, accounting for 15 to 25 percent of domestic Internet traffic on any given day, according to InMind, a marketing company. The day after its shutdown, Internet traffic in the entire nation slowed down by an estimated 5 to 15 percent. The high volume of business would suggest that the total financial losses to copyright holders could run into millions, if the freeloading users had been required to pay for licensed copies of the movies or videos.

Savanevsky said that even if the site does not make a comeback, the shutdown is unlikely to have a lasting effect as other pirate sites will spring up to fill any void. “It is most likely that other websites where people would be able to find free stuff will pop up soon,” he said.

When EX.ua’s predecessor, Infostore, was shut down in 2008 and accused of disseminating child pornography, it took a year for a new major service to appear.

Shutdown spurs debate

The closure stirred controversy and heated debates. Some defended the move, while users condemned it as a violation of their rights.

Jim Phillipoff, CEO of Xtra TV, a satellite TV provider and sister company of the Kyiv Post, said the crackdown was “a big step forward” in fighting piracy. Proliferation of file-sharing websites means companies are unable to sell movie packs to consumers, losing millions of dollars annually, Phillipoff said.

Yuris Piskovoy, a Latvian citizen who owns and runs the troublesome host, told the Kyiv Post in a March 2011 interview that he actively cooperated with intellectual rights holders, and wanted to create a resource that would distribute royalties fairly. He said he removed content at the request of copyright holders.

But the Interior Ministry said it was the copyright holders who requested an investigation into EX.ua’s activities. It said software developers Adobe, Microsoft and Graphisoft Inc., as well as Ukraine’s 1+1 television channel complained about the site.

Adobe representatives said EX.ua was difficult to deal with. “We can’t follow every instance of the uploading of our programs to their web resource. EX.ua should have deleted it, and it did not do it,” Pavel Mykoliuk, a legal representative of Adobe in Ukraine, told Kommersant-Ukraine newspaper on Jan. 31.

Microsoft representatives in Ukraine denied they filed any complaints to the police against EX.ua.

The 1+1 channel said they asked EX.ua to remove some of the channel’s content and approached the Interior Ministry to defend their copyright, but never asked to shut down the site in question.

Many speculated that the shutdown is designed to please the West, particularly now that Ukraine is facing financial troubles and courting the West for money. The United States has conditioned some bilateral meetings with top Ukrainian officials on progress in defending intellectual property rights.

“It reminds me of the early 2000s when in an attempt to improve relations with the U.S., Ukraine closed down several factories which reproduced illegal CDs,” Savanevsky said.

Support for the idea that the EX.ua shutdown will prove to be an isolated case came from the Interior Ministry itself.

Ruslan Pakhomov, deputy head of the Department to fight cybercrime in the Interior Ministry, said there are no more ongoing criminal cases against other file-sharing websites. But Pakhomov promised to launch an investigation “when copyright holders complain.”

The shutdown riled up the Internet community and hackers.

Hours after the crackdown, the Interior Ministry’s website went down as a result of a cyber attack, followed by the president’s website and many others.
Some users like Denis Oleynikov reposted instructions on their blogs on how to initiate a cyber attack on the government’s sites, and encouraged people to use it. Oleinikov left Ukraine last year after his small company was forced to shut down as a result of a police raid into alleged copyright infringement.

After the EX.ua was accounced to resume operation, governmentel websites stopped experiencing problems and were accessible again.

Copyright debate starts

Many EX.ua users welcomed its shutdown as a move towards respecting copyrights and upholding the nation’s obligations as part of the World Trade Organization.

Journalist Sergey Sidorenko, who confessed having used pirated software and watching pirated movies, praised the closure on his Facebook page. “If we want to live in a civilized manner, then let’s not complain about obvious attempts to establish legitimacy,” Sidorenko wrote.

Others argued that it’s individual users, not the website, who are responsible for violating intellectual rights as they are the ones who uploaded the material.

Interior Ministry officials did not rule out that individual users who uploaded content to EX.ua without permission of the copyright holder might be held liable to copyright violations.

“Those who deliberately posted pirate video on EX.ua website could face criminal liability,” said Mikhail Ilyashev, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based Ilyashev and Partners law firm. He says that both – those who post pirate content online and those who create file-sharing websites – may be held liable for copyright violations. Ilyashev also believes that while downloading of pirate content may be compared to a petty theft, it will be hard to prove the guilt of those who downloaded such content.

In a bizarre twist of events, as people debated copyright issues, Interior Ministry’s spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk acknowledged that police are at fault as almost half of the software on official computers is illegal.

At a briefing on Feb. 1, he tried to assure journalists that the ministry is trying to fix the problem. “The Interior Ministry informed Microsoft [about it] and now the company is negotiating with the authorities how to legalize the software,” he said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be accessed at [email protected]