Piracy Mirror Blocks Fail to Help Legal Streaming Services

Illegal streaming site traffic continues to rise despite government blocking efforts and mirror site takedowns.

Legal streaming platforms blame search engine Yandex for their struggles, arguing that legitimate services rank lower in search results than pirated sites. Yandex representatives respond: "we will not filter search results."

The Internet Video Association—representing popular paid streaming services—compiled the statistics. When a law banning piracy mirror sites was introduced in early winter 2017, it produced a temporary effect, but by early 2018 everything had "stabilized" again.

After blocking access to the primary illegal resource and its copies, the official site or legitimate streaming service still fails to occupy top positions in Yandex's so-called "top rankings," allowing pirates to keep reappearing. A user visits a pirated site for a few hours to watch an enormous amount of free video content, which gives the search engine "reason" to rank such a site higher. Google, by contrast, consistently ranks legal streaming services above pirated resources in search results.

Yandex notes that copyright holders today have "unprecedented tools to restrict access to illegal resources or their mirrors." However, if the government forces Yandex to regulate its search results, that would essentially eliminate competition and raise questions about who would monitor rights holders' actions. Yandex representatives explain that the habit of paying for video content in Russia simply hasn't formed yet—it requires time. Currently, Russia ranks second globally in visits to pirate content sites, with the United States in first place. Yet in the United Kingdom, despite abundant pirate resources, residents typically search for legal options first and turn to piracy only when they can't find what they need.

Ivan Zasursky from Moscow State University's journalism faculty urges against portraying Yandex as "a pirate promotion company." The search engine acts as quickly as it can today.
Moreover, there is no research demonstrating that Yandex drives the majority of traffic to illegal streaming sites. What Zasursky is certain about is that online casinos genuinely facilitate piracy by using illegal video content as advertising platforms—and that's where efforts should begin.