Copyright Law

Russian Cops Bust BitTorrent Tracker Site ?Interfilm?

By soulxtc

First time ever.

Last Friday authorities from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested the owners of BitTorrent tracker site Interfilm.ru (Google cache). It was the first ever raid against a BitTorrent tracker site in that country.

The site was hosted by Dutch ISP Leaseweb and, as of press time, appears down.

During the raid, the police arrested the website?s owners, a married couple known only via their nicknames “Ripper” and “Nadezhda,” and several employees.

Russian anti-piracy organization RAPO (one of the founders of the MPA) accused Interfilm of earning revenue through ads and charging a fee for higher download speeds.

Konstantin Zemchenkov, director of the RAPO, said that it filed a criminal case 2 to 3 weeks before the raid was carried out. It’s see\king prosecution under part 3 of Article 146 of the Russian Criminal Code, “Violation of copyright and related rights,” which calls for up to 6 years in prison and a fine of up to 500,000 rubles, or the amount of wages and other income earned up to the past 3 years.

The Producers Guild of Russia is using the news to press for legislation requiring ISP-level monitoring of illegal file-sharing. It claims that online piracy in Russia has reached “enormous proportions.”

jared@zeropaid.com

[Hat Tip]

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).