The confrontation between Yandex and Roskomnadzor is brewing, and within a day, the search engine may fall under partial blocking

The result of August 30, 2018 : Yandex ceded the ILV and deleted all references to suspicious videos.

On August 29, 2018, Yandex refused to comply with the requirements of Roskomnadzor to remove links to pirated content from video search and called such claims unfounded.



Interfax announced that Yandex is going to appeal the decision of the Moscow City Court to remove pirated content from the search results Yandex.Video.

The press service of “Yandex” issued a statement, which, inter alia, stated the following:

In accordance with the law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection,” the mechanic is this: pirated content is blocked on the side of the site owner and on the so-called “mirrors” of this site.

Blocking requirements do not apply to search engines. The system has been working this way for a long time.

Now, in response to the appeal of the TV channels, the Moscow City Court has made definitions that fundamentally contradict its own previous practice on this issue. Worse, they do not solve the problem of controversial content, as resources with such content will be available in other search engines, social networks and so on.

We consider the claims against us unfounded and not in compliance with the legislation and we will appeal the rulings of the Moscow City Court.

According to company representatives, in order to find a solution to the problem, Yandex is hoping for cooperation with market participants “within the framework of the existing legal framework.” It was also noted that Yandex is in favor of high-quality legal content for users, on which rightholders earn "legitimate money." She brought her Yandex.Music and Kinopoisk services to the company as evidence of the possibility of such a symbiosis.

If the pirated content will not be removed, "Yandeks.Video" service will be blocked, even if the appeal against the decision of the Moscow City Court, said deputy head of Roskomnadzor Vadim Subbotin TASS correspondent.

Let me remind you that the situation began to develop when TNT, TV-3, 2x2, Super channels sent a statement to the Moscow City Court with a demand to take preliminary security measures to the Yandex resource. In particular, they asked to suppress the appearance in the search results of “Yandex” videos from sites where the TV series “House arrest”, “Out of Game”, the show “Mystical Stories” and the animated series “Caution, Earthlings” are illegally posted.

In general, claims to Yandex about the distribution of links to pirated resources may not be groundless, although their scale may be deliberately exaggerated. RBC remembers the words of the head of the ivi.ru online cinema, Oleg Tumanov, who on May 25, 2018 at the SPIEF suggested that Yandex’s share in the traffic of the top 10 pirated resources is 78%. Alexander Akopov, a member of the board of the Association of Film and Television Producers, co-founder of the production company Cosmos Studio, also said at the SPIEF that, in his opinion , Yandex was the main pirate platform at that time .

Kommersant, in the light of the current situation, refreshed memories of the previous similar precedent in the Russian market:

Suffice it to recall the French Dailymotion - the third most visited video hosting in the world after YouTube and Vimeo. Back in January 2017, according to the suit of the Friday channel, which is part of the holding, Dailymotion was blocked for life in Russia. Already after the parties tried to negotiate a settlement, but it turned out that the life lock on the law can not be canceled.

UPD On August 29, it became known that, apart from the refusal to remove “pirated” links from search results, Yandex did not sign the Memorandum on Combating Piracy on the Internet , which is an initiative of Roskomnadzor. The memorandum in the current edition requires revision, and the company is open for cooperation, the press service of Yandex reported.

UPD2 in the evening of August 30, 2018 Yandex surrendered . Yandex has removed links to the Gazprom-Media series from the video search after the threat of blocking. The company removed all controversial links, among which could be legal content. The results of the survey on Habré were prophetic.

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