The officers of the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine reported on banning the pirate FS online cinema (resources FS.TO, BRB.TO, FS.UA and CXZ.TO). This is featured on the portal “Segodnya.ua”.
To shut down the pirate resource, the police officers seized technical infrastructure equipment. Investigative and operational actions were carried out in the framework of the criminal proceedings opened under Part 3, Article 176 (Violation of Copyright and Related Rights) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
“The police proved the implication in crime of 19 people who created resources and dealt with filling them with content, administering and maintaining them. Separately, there were identified foreign, including the offshore ones, and a number of Ukrainian companies. Their accounts were used for legalizing funds obtained by illegal operation of the FS Group’s resources. This refers to tens of millions of hryvnias annually”, as the statement said.
The detectives also made authorized searches in the offices and houses of defendants in the criminal case, thus collecting additional information proving the illegal operation of the FS Group’s web resources.
The operational investigations were initiated following the complaints, filed by rights holders, notably by the Motion Picture Association of America and a number of Ukrainian companies holding copyright and related rights, which were violated by FS.TO. The companies’ losses are evaluated at about UAH 5 million.
According to the news edition, the total audience of the FS resources exceeds one million users.
Let us recall that in November of last year, the FS service made an attempt to enter the legal online entertainment market in Ukraine.
Not long ago, the Ukrainian Cyber Police in cooperation with the US and UK colleagues stopped the operation of one of the most famous torrent trackers.