A husband and wife duo has been given the case over illegal video distribution, which was filed to a Moscow court by Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Grin, according to the prosecutor general’s office website.

      Hereby, the couple has become another target in Russia's anti-piracy clamp down for sharing films on the Internet. Copyright holders evaluated the total cost of the distribution rights for the over 30 videos that the couple uploaded at 38 billion rubles.

      Andrei and Natalya Lopukhov created a special site, where they used to issue illegal copies of different Russian and foreign films with their amateur translations. For the small monthly fee they gave an access for the site's users to download the copies. The site was blocked in May 2009.

      Before its closure the site was listed among the top-20 piracy websites. Then ts was promptly moved to another domain name and is still functioning, which also happened to file exchange service torrents.ru.

      Now the couple can be sentenced to up to six years in jail with a fine of 500,000 rubles or an amount equal to three years’ salary, as dictated by the Criminal Code.

      The problem of illegal spreading of media content still remains one of the most difficult in Russia. The last few years the prosecutors and possessors of rights have toughened their struggle against online pirates. They were able to close several big sites and bring charges against some pirates (most of them were common users who were unlucky to download an illegal content), but it is still just a spit in the ocean compared to the whole amount of illegal information in the Russian Internet.

      Some experts say the only solution to the online piracy problem is developing legal services. Unfortunately, this segment of Russian online market is still in quite bad condition.

Sources: BBC Russia The Moscow News Images: AiF