The Russian domain zone .ru has taken the first place in the number of new illegal platforms, according to data from the analytical company F6.
By the spring of 2025, the share of such resources in this zone reached 22.8%, surpassing the international domains .com (12.7%) and .online (10.8%). Experts attribute the popularity of .ru to the low registration cost and simplified verification procedures, which allow creating sites anonymously.
At the same time, the infrastructure of pirate services is often based outside of Russia. Resources using content delivery networks (CDNs) are mainly hosted in the Netherlands, the USA, Ukraine, Germany, and France. This complicates blocking, as the jurisdiction of these countries does not always cooperate with Russian regulators. Alloha leads among CDN providers (61% of illegal sites), followed by Rewall (42%) and Lumex (11%).
The technical side of the operation of pirate platforms includes a complex architecture. For example, third and fourth-level subdomains are used to bypass restrictions, and video is transmitted via HTTP requests or WebSocket connections. The latter provide two-way communication between the user's device and the server, which increases resistance to blocking. According to F6 estimates, the infrastructure of large video services covers over 4.4 thousand domains, and their databases contain more than 550 thousand video files.
Roskomnadzor reports blocking 12.5 million units of pirated content in 2024 — 42.2% more than in the previous period. However, according to analysts, the revenues of illegal platforms continue to grow: last year, revenue increased by 32%, reaching 4.5 billion rubles. This is due to the active placement of advertising, including in-stream models, where videos are integrated directly into the video stream.
