In General Department of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the RA Investigative Committee circumstances of breaching copyright and adjacent rights of TV Company by a number of websites are being found. On the base of the obtained evidence charge was pressed against one person.

In May, 2016 a report was received from the director of “Shant” LLC informing that TV channel “Shant” is live broadcasted through a number of websites, TV programs produced by TV Company are inserted thus breaching their copyright and adjacent rights.

A criminal case was initiated according to the Part 1 of the Article 158 of RA Criminal Code preliminary investigation of which is conducted in General Department of Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the RA Investigative Committee.

Actual data were obtained on the allegation that TV programs are broadcasted through more than 20 websites without the author’s permission, the programs made by them are disseminated. Investigatory and other procedural actions of great volume have been conducted to find the owners of the websites.

It was found that some of the websites were created through server sites located in the Russian Federation, some in the United States of America, some in Australia and one in Ukraine.

In the framework of the criminal case permission was received from court on getting the IP addresses of the observed websites on the base of which queries were sent to the competent bodies of the mentioned countries to provide legal aid.

Information requested through the query was received from the Russian Federation pursuant to which one of the websites - www.arm-film.ru is recorded in the name of Yerevan resident, it was found that the mentioned website is accessible from IP addresses of providers located in the RA.

In the result of investigatory and procedural actions sufficient evidence were obtained on the allegation that the website owner, who is a resident of Yerevan, born in 1988, for months has illegally used the object of copyright of the TV company – series of TV series for profit inserting and disseminating them in the website without permission of the company thus causing large loss.  

During preliminary investigation LLC was found an injured party, charge was pressed against 29 year-old man according to the Point 5 of the Part 2 of the Article 158 of RA Criminal Code.

Preliminary investigation of the criminal case is ongoing, necessary measures are taken to find the owners of other websites, to give appropriate legal assessment to their actions.

Note; Everyone charged with alleged crime offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.