In Russia, the most pirate sites are recorded
The domain zone .ru has become for Russian pirates the leader in registering new resources, among the most popular networks of delivery and caching of content (CDN) – Alloha, Rewall and Lumex. Market participants note that the selection of .ru pirates is due to low prices, as well as the ease of registration.
“Kommersant” got acquainted with the study of F6 (former FAS.S.T.t., Group-IB), devoted to the analysis of the structure of the online piracy market (illegal distribution of video content) in Russia. It follows from it that the most part of the registered pirate sites – 22.8%in the spring of 2025. The domain zone. SOMOM is less popular-12.7% of registrations, closes the top 3 .online with 10.8%. The resources included in the CDN infrastructure are most often located not in Russia, but on the servers of hosting providers registered in the Netherlands, the USA, Ukraine, in Germany and France, which makes it difficult to block them.
F6 analysts also analyzed 1.4 thousand pirate sites and compiled a rating of the most popular CDNs among Russian pirates. Alloha’s network became the leader: it is chosen by 61% of the administrators of illegal resources. In second place – REWALL (42%), closes the Troika LUMEX (11%). Kodik (9%) and HDVB (7%) are less popular. The first temporarily stopped working in Russia in 2022, but subsequently resumed activities using new technical domains. The base of one pirate balancer may contain more than 550 thousand units of video.
In general, the infrastructure of all large video authorities is more than 4.4 thousand domains. It contains both technical domains, on which built-in players are placed with subdomains of the third and fourth levels and domains for streaming video, they say in F6: “The streaming of the video, in turn, is carried out through HTTP (the recipient itself, usually a web browser. « Kommersant ») or WebSocket connection (allows the application on a computer or smartphone to set a bilateral connection with the server. « Kommersant »). The latter was noticed by such balankers as HDVB and REWLL. ” F6 analysts believe that it is the CDN that allow the pirates to effectively scale business, bypass blocking and earn: 36% of advertising on pirate resources is on the in-stream models: videos are broadcast through cooperation with partnerships or directly video battalioners themselves.
In Roskomnadzor, they assured that they were taking measures to limit access to pirate resources in accordance with the Federal Law “On Information, Information Technologies and On Information Protection”. “Since 2013, the department has deleted or blocked more than 4 million links.” In addition, Roskomnadzor blocks a number of domains of pirate CDN services for the distribution of videos with inaccurate socially significant information, the representative of the structure said, without calling them.
The income of pirate video services increased by 32%over the past year, to 4.5 billion rubles, estimated at J’Son and Partners Consulting (see “Kommersant” of March 25). The indicator turned out to be higher than that of OLV (Online Video) advertising, since advertisers began to be located more often on illegal resources. In addition, in January -December 2024, 12.5 million units of pirate content were blocked (sites, social networks and video hosting). This exceeds the indicators of 2023 by 42.2% (8.8 million). The number of blocked pirate domains for the year also increased by 38%, to 110 thousand, estimated at F6.
Kommersant’s interlocutors on the media market know that the choice of pirates for registering the domain zone .ru is due to cheapness, as well as the ease of registration for both residents and non -resident Russian: “Some registrars do not always strictly check the data of the owners, which allows us to create sites anonymously. In addition, the domains of the .ru zone are more trust. ” At the same time, the domain zone. SOMOM is highly recognizable, added to F6, it also does not have a regional binding, as in the case of with .ru, which allows you to expand the target audience to users from the CIS countries.
