Ukrainian cyber police have exposed a pirate based in the Kyiv region who illegally rebroadcast the TV channels of the participants of the Clear Sky Initiative.
Causing losses of over UAH600,000 (€18,500) to StarLightMedia and 1+1 Media, he faces up to five years in prison.
Commenting on the development, Vyacheslav Mienko, head of the Clean Sky Initiative, said: “Another case with the stopping of an unscrupulous provider demonstrates that at the state level, the protection of intellectual property works systematically. And we are glad that we can move in synergy with law enforcement to make offenders aware of the scale of their illegality, to take due responsibility, and to eventually make such illegal business unprofitable because of the inevitability of punishment”.
Dmytro Levin, head of the pay-TV & Digital StarLightMedia Division Monitoring Centre, added: “We are always ready for dialogue, but we have to admit that pirates do not always need it. The current cases of the StarLightMedia Content Monitoring Centre allow us to systematically and quickly, in accordance with current legislation, interact with law enforcement agencies to stop offences by dishonest market players, and our priority remains the effective protection of intellectual and related rights of StarLightMedia”.
Oleksandr Paputsya, head of the SmartSolutions Law Group, said that during the pre-trial investigation, cyber police officers searched the provider and confiscated telecommunications equipment and financial and economic documents. By the decision of the investigating judge of June 24, the enterprise’s property was seized. The issue of conducting a forensic telecommunication examination is being resolved, and investigative actions are underway.