The court of Revda, Sverdlovsk Region, found a local sole trader guilty of violating Universal Pictures’ copyrights. It was detected in the course of a preliminary investigation that in April 2007, a thirty-year-old businessman bought 19 pirated DVDs with a number of feature films on them that are exclusively owned by Universal Pictures. He was then going to sell those on one of Revda’s markets and make some profit. The local law-enforcement officers confiscated the pirated items after the offender’s intent to make illegal profit had been proved.

The unfortunate businessman was estimated to have done Universal Pictures some $80,000 worth of damage. He had to undergo a criminal suit, got two years of suspended sentence and had to pay a 15,000-ruble fine.