Ukraine demonstrates real successes in fighting piracy

At the section “Fighting piracy in Ukraine. What has been done” which took place on September 19 at KYIV MEDIA WEEK 2018 international media forum, Vyacheslav Miyenko, deputy general manager for legal issues at 1+1 Media and managing partner at Smartsolutions Law Group; Nikolay Fayengold, commercial director at StarLight Digital; Vladimir Iling, head of Ukrainian Anti-Piracy Association; and Zaur Urusov, deputy head of cyber-police department presented their report on work results in 2017-2018.  

For example, according to cyber-police data, in the first six months of 2018 34 criminal proceedings were initiated, which is one and a half times more than in 2016. According to Miyenko’s data, in 2018 the content of Ukrainian media groups is lacking in top 50 Google requests,  kinofilms.tv has been blocked along with over 30 accounts in social networks; there were 6 searches and seizures of equipment, 23 criminal proceedings, two cases in court, over 15 apps deleted from GooglePlay and AppStore. In addition, according to Fayengold, 20 providers were found underreporting, four cases were initiated on selling equipment with software for access to pirated content, there were 27 criminal proceedings and five searches and one case in court. Finally, Iling said that in three years 162 pirate websites and 50 cinemas were closed down. However, for now there hasn’t been a precedent of conviction for piracy.

One should still note that a range of drawbacks remains. For example, the biggest one is the lack of cyber-police inspectors due to which control over pirated content publishing on the web becomes more complicated. Besides, a long time is needed for technical and economic (financial damage to right holders) expert assessments; there is a lack of qualified experts in prosecutor’s office  as well as of cooperation from law enforcement in other countries in case pirated content is stored on servers abroad.