Online casinos paid for illegal film distribution in Russia

The number of pirated copies of films continues to grow from year to year.
04.05.2018
Kommersant
Origin source
The protection of intellectual property in Russia remains at an unsatisfactory level, the annual report of the US Trade Representative says. Among the main problems are the number of counterfeit, the opacity of societies for the collective management of copyright and related rights, the ineffectiveness of combating piracy. In particular, the number of pirated screen copies of films of Russian origin continues to grow - from 63 in 2016 to 78 in 2017.

The US Trade Mission (USTR) has issued another report on the state of the intellectual property market in more than 30 countries. Russia has traditionally been included in the priority monitoring list together with Algeria, Indonesia, Kuwait, China and other countries. Among the main problems in the USTR, as well as a year ago, note the continued growth in the number of screen copies of films. The number of "screens" made in Russia in 2017 was 78 against 63 in 2016 and 26 in 2015.

The number of screen copies is growing, confirms Dmitry Tyankin, deputy director of the intellectual property protection department of Group-IB. This is explained by the transition from the unorganized model, when violators basically removed "screens" for themselves and in rare cases for sale, to a centralized system of buying video from cinemas, he believes. The price of pirated video recording ranges from $ 200 to $ 450, which makes "natural" the emergence of people who are ready to constantly shoot films in theaters. Attracts violators and the lack of punishment, said Mr. Tyunkin: even if a person is caught red-handed, law enforcement agencies often do not bring him to justice.

Buy illegal records of agents of illegal online casinos and much less large pirate online cinemas. "For illegal casinos, this is a very advantageous variant of advertising: when a video appears on the network, it spreads across all pirate portals, along with a video embedded in the video," explains Mr. Tyunkin. At the same time, interest in "screens" and audience coverage is usually high. It persists in the period from the appearance of the film on the big screen until the sale of a legal copy, that is, on average two or three months. The same time interval from the moment of appearance to blocking, as a rule, the sites of illegal casinos also operate, the expert says.

The general director of the Karo network, Olga Zinyakova, acknowledges the problem with the distribution of pirated copies of films. "There are times when they find themselves on the Internet even before the official release, which negatively affects the fees and deprives some of the income from both the movie theaters and film distributors," she said. The law on blocking "mirrors" of pirated sites came into effect only in October 2017, so it's too early to judge its results, but "given the current figures, it is obvious that this measure is not enough," Ziniakova said. In the "Karo" insist that the responsibility for the distribution of illegal content should be entrusted to the end user, not only to providers and sites.

In cinemas "Cinema Park" and "Formula Kino" did not notice the growth of cases of piracy filming. Over the past year, the number of such incidents, on the contrary, has decreased, say the press service of the united network. To prevent pirated copying, the company works with personnel and equips the halls with special technologies, including cameras with infrared radiation, which allow recording the fact of shooting and the person of the offender.

In addition to piracy, important issues in USTR are the opacity of societies for collective management of copyright and related rights, the complexity of procedures for protecting intellectual property for rightholders and the spread of Chinese counterfeit goods imported from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. The situation with the spread of counterfeit is "catastrophic throughout the world," Yury Vopilov, general director of BrandMonitor law firm, believes. In Russia, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, every third light industry product is counterfeited, and, according to the BrandMonitor study, nearly 90% of Russians are ready to buy counterfeit goods. "While consumers will tolerate such goods, counterfeit can not be won," concludes Mr. Vopilov.

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