Since the beginning of 2020, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) has already blocked more than 10 thousand sites infringes copyrights and their so-called mirrors (copies), while over the entire last year – 6 thousand.
Roskomnadzor adds links to the register, on the basis of which Internet providers block access to resources where pirated content has been repeatedly posted.
In the first half of 2020, the number of links to illegal content in Russia increased by 26% compared to the same period last year.
The number of links to pirated content in social networks, where users post it, has grown the most this year – by 161%.
According to the Media Communication Union, which maintains a register of pirated copies of the content of domestic copyright holders, over the past six months, 4.2 million links have been blocked. From November 2018 to May 2020, there were 2.8 million links in the registry.
In 2019, after the closure of a number of the largest pirate networks that supplied illegal content to 90% of online cinemas in Russia and the CIS, the illegal content market for the first time after five years of growth sank from $87 million in 2018 to $63.5 million in 2019. However, the “pirates” at the end of last year were able to attract investment, regroup, and use new technical capabilities to actively oppose copyright holders. At the same time, downloading illegal content carries high risks: almost a quarter of pirate sites are infected with malware.
At the same time, experts note that the number of pirate sites on the Runet is growing, but their audience is getting smaller. The number of direct visits to these sites is also decreasing, although the number of transitions to them through social networks and search engines is increasing. This is due to the fact that large pirate Internet cinemas are already blocked, and people find little-known sites that appear through a search.