Russian Regulator Claims Anti-Piracy Efforts Are Making an Impact

Attendance at Russian cinemas has increased by nearly 40% over the past three years thanks largely to the fight against Internet piracy, Alexander Zharov, director of the Russian federal telecom regulator Roskomnadzor, reported during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Since the beginning of the anti-piracy campaign in 2015, Roskomnadzor has shut down nearly 6,000 websites with illegal content and forced another 11,000 websites to permanently delete stolen intellectual-property items, Zharov noted.

Just a few years ago, the Russian Internet was “a real pirates’ bay,” as every single movie, both Russian and foreign, appeared on pirates’ websites immediately after its release on big screens, according to Zharov. As a result, the legal cinema business suffered heavy losses, he added.

Although the anti-piracy campaign in Russia is gaining momentum, recent research shows that claims that the pirates have been defeated are actually far from the truth. In 2018, pirates stole and posted on the Internet every second movie released on big screens, according to research conducted by Group-IB. There are 90 million active Internet users in Russia and on average every user watches 110 stolen films on the pirates’ websites or downloads films from them each year.

All in all, the overall number of queries on search engines such as “watch movie for free,” which lead to pirates’ websites, totaled 10 billion in 2017, Group-IB estimated.