In 2024, Russian media holdings had to intensify the fight against piracy: the number of links they requested to block in search engines doubled compared to the previous year. Their number reached 180 million.
In 2023, there were 89 million such links, and in 2022 — 76.5 million. From the moment the anti-piracy memorandum came into effect in 2018 until March 2021, only 15 million links were added.
In 2024, Gazprom-Media Holding (GPMH), which includes NTV, TNT and other channels, initiated the blocking of about 17.4 thousand sites. As a result, more than 6.2 million links were removed from Yandex search results for the GPMH request, and about 5 million from Google, which is 17% more than in 2023. The National Media Group (NMG) saw an increase of approximately 60% in the number of requests to block pirated content.
The number of lawsuits related to pirated content also increased: in 2024, GPMH initiated 904 lawsuits, of which 775 were decided in favor of the holding. This led to the recovery of more than 15.9 million rubles — 30% more than in 2023.
Pavel Rusakov, Director of the Intellectual Property Protection Department at GPM Digital Innovations, noted that significant amounts of recovery create an incentive to respect intellectual property rights and contribute to successful negotiations with administrators of pirate sites.
What is the Anti-Piracy Memorandum
The anti-piracy memorandum, signed on November 1, 2018, between search engines (Yandex, Mail.ru and Rambler) and Russian copyright holders, primarily video content producers, obliges Internet platforms to remove links to pirated resources without legal proceedings. In September 2023, Roskomnadzor announced the connection of the book and music industries to the memorandum. Publishers noted that the results have not yet met expectations, as the registry was developed mainly for the needs of film companies.
