Roskomnadzor has removed over 300 million links to pirated content from search results in Russia

During the industry conference «Book Market of Russia — 2024» at the Moscow International Book Fair, Evgeny Zaitsev, the head of the Department for Control and Supervision in the field of electronic communications at Roskomnadzor (The Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media), reported that since 2018, more than 301 million links to pirated content have been taken down from search results as part of the anti-piracy memorandum.

In 2018, a memorandum was signed between copyright holders and search engine operators to collaborate on protecting exclusive rights in the digital era. This agreement allows for direct cooperation in removing links to illegal content from search results, ensuring that pages infringing copyright and related rights are excluded promptly. With the memorandum in place, pirated links are eliminated within 15-20 minutes of detection.

In 2023, an expansion of the memorandum included representatives from the book and music industries in its efforts to combat piracy.

Furthermore, Roskomnadzor has engaged with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) through the implementation of a memorandum signed in September 2020. This collaboration involves the use of Wipo Alert, an online platform where national authorities can upload and update lists of copyright-infringing websites. This enables advertisers, advertising agencies, and intermediaries to access these lists either manually or through an API, providing a comprehensive view of infringing sites globally.

Zaitsev revealed that Roskomnadzor has contributed approximately 2.8 thousand domain names to the Wipo Alert database since the beginning of this partnership, with ongoing efforts to expand and update the WIPO database.