Recently, the Internet Video Association, which includes the largest Russian online cinemas (ivi, Megogo and others), has published the results of a study of the audience of websites with legal and pirated films. Association experts
analyzed the situation with pirate and legal cinemas in order to understand how effective the law turned out to be to block the “mirrors” of violating sites.
Recall that this law came into force in October 2017. Immediately after this, pirated websites began to lose an audience, attendance of such resources decreased by about 30%. But in February 2018, the decline stopped. Moreover, a slight increase was noted.
According to the general director of the Internet Video Association, Aleksey Birdin, the fight against piracy resources is not very effective, because when you block existing websites, new ones immediately appear. And they are already beginning to rise in the issuance of search services, cheerfully raising their positions. But legal online cinemas almost did not change the location in the issue.
The fact is that search engine mechanisms suggest an increase in the output of those resources on which users spend a lot of time. Well, since the users on the website with free movies “hang out” for a long time, these resources are torn up. At legal cinemas, where you have to pay money to watch or buy a movie, users spend not so much time. Moreover, there is a rather high percentage of failures, since the viewer who has come to a certain request, seeing the request to pay, immediately closes the site, starting to look for an opportunity to watch a movie for free.
According to Birdin, the worst thing with this situation is in Yandex. But Google somehow increases the issue of legal resources in the issue, understating the rating of pirated resources. “Illegal resources get the bulk of search engine traffic. Unfortunately, the issuance by Yandex of illegal resources among the priority results is an indisputable fact, ”says ivi CEO Oleg Tumanov.
By the way, about a week ago, the largest companies creating and distributing content in Russia
demanded that PS Yandex be completely removed from the search results of a link to pirated resources. The letter was addressed to the CEO of the Yandex group of companies, Arkady Volozh. “We call on Yandex to use all available methods to detect illegal content and eliminate it from both search results and Yandex’s applications and services,” the document said.
It is logical that the company representatives did not agree with the accusations. The press service said that the search for Yandex works in full compliance with Russian law. Moreover, right holders have “unprecedented opportunities” to block illegal sites and their “mirrors”. And if you oblige the search engines to filter the issue, then this can lead to abuse by right holders and unfair competition.
Also, Yandex believes that the habit of watching videos on legal resources is developed very slowly, because most users are used to not paying anything for viewed content.
Interestingly, a study of the British company Muso shows that the majority of users of pirated resources are first trying to find legal content on the web. And after it does not appear, people go to pirated sites. By the way, on the “Habré” has long been expressed the view that the film, which was released recently, I want to watch right now, and not in a couple of months. And that's just the legal resources with this "now" can not cope. Online novelty may appear in a few months. Accordingly, all those who do not want (or cannot) go to the movie in the cinema, begin to look for it on illegal resources.
As for Yandex itself, far from all experts find the service guilty of supporting piracy. “The company is at the beginning of a long journey. In the search business, everything depends on how well you satisfy the requests, they cannot act faster than they do, ”said Ivan Zassursky, head of the department of new media journalism at Moscow State University.