A week after temporarily shutting down EX.ua, Ukrainian police eased pressure on the popular file-sharing website, which is listed by the Recording Industry Association of America as one of the world’s 25 worst Internet piracy sites.
Police on Feb. 2 allowed the site, a popular download site for free movies and music, to reopen after shutting it down on Jan. 31 allegedly as part of a crackdown on copyright violations.
The decision followed a backlash from hackers and citizens who in protest brought down several government websites, including the Interior Ministry and presidential sites, bombarding them with massive amounts of traffic.
Supposedly blocked outside Ukraine, the website is once again accessible to domestic Internet users. In an apparent bid to win over support of cash-strapped Ukrainians who have grown used to downloading Hollywood movies free of charge, several lawmakers stepped up in support of the file-sharing site.
In a public demonstration, Viktor Yanukovych Jr., son of Ukraine’s president and a lawmaker with the Party of Regions, sent a letter to Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko.
He asked him to check why access to EX.ua was blocked. In his letter, the younger Yanukovych said that blocking the portal without a court ruling will not solve the problem.
Human rights commissioner Nina Karpachova defended EX.ua, describing it as “the only form of access to humanity’s cultural heritage.”
Some lawmakers are willing to go even further in helping the file-sharing industry. Oleksandr Feldman from the Party of Regions on Feb. 6 submitted a draft law which might make operation of file-sharing websites safer.
If the law is adopted, then deleting content from the web or closing Internet access to a specific website will only be allowed on the basis of a court ruling. Feldman said that only access to specific content should be blocked, not the entire website.
“The problem is that Internet is developing much faster than our criminal code,” said lawyer Artem Stoyanov.
Despite the uncertainty, copyright holders can still defend their rights and demand compensation in court for any violations.
Some analysts, like Viktor Levandovsky, head of the Association of Internet Space Development, believe that authorities are often used as tools in raiding businesses and the EX.ua flap is a case in point.
“In the case of EX.ua, the case was falsified in order to change ownership of the website. And the police helped out in this,” Levandovsky said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.
Police deny such allegations and insist that their fight against piracy is genuine. EX.ua officials could not be reached for comment.
But Microsoft issued a Feb. 9 press release saying the company’s illegally pirated software reappeared on the EX.ua website, despite the ongoing criminal investigation into alleged copyright infringement. “Management of the portal still lets users upload illegal content,” said Dmytro Shymkiv, general director of Microsoft Ukraine.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at onyshkiv@kyivpost.com.
