PRESS: Pirated movies viewing may crack record in Runet in 2018
MOSCOW, Sep 14 (PRIME) -- The Russian-speaking Internet segment Runet may set a record in 2018 by the number of views of pirated movies, and this market has reached U.S. $85 million per year and will keep on rising, business daily Kommersant reported on Friday, citing data of information security company Group-IB.
Local pirates shot screen copies of 280 movies in January–September, or 80% of all released pictures, Group-IB said in a research. In 2017, the country’s cinemas showed 477 movies, and 211 of them were illegally copied. The 2017 figure is six times higher than the 2016 one.
Pirates’ revenue increased 21% to $85 million in 2017, Group-IB said.
Andrei Busargin, head of the intellectual property department at Group-IB, said that the number of views of pirated movies could have been at 110 million in 2017, it could hit a new record in 2018. Perpetrators are now better equipped and use content delivery networks, which significantly lowers the market entry threshold.
Monetization of piracy depends on advertising traffic, 75% of which is presented by search systems. The total traffic of video pirates increased 12% in 2017, and the number of requests of Russian users for a free watching of a movie or series in search engines was almost at 10 billion requests.
Perpetrators earn $3 per 1,000 views. Creation of a piracy resource costs some $240, which means that it starts paying back after 80,000 views. A screen version costs $200–450.
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