Last year, the Russian company
Amedia TV , which calls itself “the leader of the Russian market for pay-TV and subscription on the Internet,”
concluded an extended deal on an exclusive contract with the American studio HBO. Under this agreement, from July 2017, the Russian company received exclusive rights to show all the new HBO series, as well as unlimited access to the already existing library of the channel. From August 2017, her television channels began to work under the brand with HBO (Home of HBO).
The agreement was costly for Amedia TV (the amount of the transaction is kept secret), but not least due to this transaction, the revenue of the Russian company in 2017 increased by 30% and
reached 1.6 billion rubles .
For further growth in revenue, there is only one problem - pirates who illegally translate and duplicate HBO series, putting them on torrents for free. For such activities, they are going to be held criminally liable under article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The first to be distributed was the studio “Cube Cuba”, consisting of two individuals.
"The Cubic Cube Group", consisting of (according to their own information) two individuals, violates our rights and therefore we consider the possibility of bringing them to justice, ranging from limiting the distribution of links to downloading and watching movies and TV shows, that our company owns, said the press service of Amedia TV. “Since, according to information known to us, Cuban Cube is not a legal entity, in our opinion, the most effective and efficient way can be to hold accountable in the manner provided for by article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Violation of Copyright and Related Rights).
Representatives of the copyright holder assess the damage from the activities of the studio "Cube Cuba" as "particularly large." According to the
text of the article , in this case, for illegal dubbing and distribution of serials, violators are threatened with forced labor for up to five years or imprisonment for up to six years with a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles.
Employees of the Cubic Cuba studio learned about the threat by accident - a certain company
sent them a screen letter , which refers to the plans of Amedia TV to open a criminal case. It also says that the Internet Video Association appealed to the antimonopoly service with the aim of "making decisions against advertisers who place advertisements in pirated video and in places where pirated products are distributed."
In the Vkontakte community, users unanimously expressed their disapproval of the actions of Amedia TV. Employees of the studio "Cube Cuba" appeal to the community for legal assistance and advice.
At the same time, the studio "Cubik in Cuba" believes that it can establish mutually beneficial cooperation "Amedia TV". Olga Kravtsova, one of the founders of the studio,
called the best cooperation, in which Amedia TV hired studio translators and added their voice acting with obscene vocabulary as a separate audio track: “We hope that common sense will win. But if everything goes further in this mode with threats to criminalize us, we will stop voicing the series. It’s very silly to sit down because you loved TV shows and well voiced prostitutes and drug addicts, ”said Olga Kravtsova.
Amedia TV has been working on the Russian media market since 2013. The company also collaborates with leading Russian and international studios and has many years of exclusive deals with Showtime, Starz, Fox, Sony Pictures Television and others. Amediateka online service is available on all major platforms - web, mobile, Smart TV, Apple TV and pay-per-view TV operators. The total base of active users of the television package Amedia Premium and the online service Amadeiatek now has 700 thousand people,
writes the Film Distributor's Bulletin.
According to Kravtsova, in 2012, Amedia TV preliminarily agreed with the Cube in Cuba studio about the localization of serials. But when she learned that only two people work in the studio, she refused to cooperate, explaining that they needed a premium voice acting for 12 votes.