Has the Cinedub pirate group been liquidated?

Probably due to the actions of this group, some American filmmakers have taken a tough line against Hungary and do not allow films to be screened at the premiere time, but send us copies with a delay of several weeks.

The National Tax and Customs Administration announced at a press conference that they had successfully uncovered the criminal cases linked to the group. The announcement was made yesterday, on October 6, during the conference "Protection of intellectual property rights and the World Wide Web" organized by NAV. The name of NAV's Information Technology Department can be linked not only to the detection of Cinedub, but also to the closing of 11 other prominent cases. The priority status is conditional upon the payment of damages exceeding HUF 500 million per case.

At the briefing, NAV staff said the site under investigation had almost 500 software, ten times as many movies, even more, 6000 game software, and a total of 4000 songs available for download. Of course, all of these were illegal, users had to pay to download them, which they could do either via SMS from their mobile phones or by bank transfer. Later, programs and movies were added to most free torrent sites. It is estimated that the members of the criminal organization were able to gain up to 15 million forints in property by selling illegal, infringing content; however, the accounts examined were in the names of several individuals, even those who could not be linked to the organization, so it was difficult to follow the path of money. On the other hand, it turned out that HUF 2006 million had been transferred to these accounts since 100.

According to a statement from the Tax and Customs Administration, two leaders of the criminal group are under pre-trial detention. For the films, NAV reported about 640 million in damages.

Source: sg.hu