The Ministry of Culture and film makers are proposing to create a state system of recording viewers on the Internet

Source: Alexandra Astakhova / Vedomosti

Today it became known that the director general of the production company Directorate of Cinema, Anatoly Maksimov, at a meeting of the government cinema council suggested introducing a state system for recording film and TV shows on the Internet in Russia, as reported by Vedomosti.

The Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky spoke about the same system. The idea was supported by many officials, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The prime minister will instruct the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Communications to work out the relevant amendments to the legislation.

Medinsky said that launching a web-based view accounting system is a joint idea of ​​the ministry and the film industry. “The Ministry of Communications has already dealt with this issue, we held meetings with producers and online platforms. We believe that a common counter will ensure transparency of the industry and is very important for its development, ”said Deputy Minister of Communications Alexey Volin.

In Russia, there is now a unified state system of cinema ticket accounting (UAIS), to which all cinemas must transmit data about all tickets sold by them. The state film fund manages such a system, the data of cinemas are open, so they are the main source of data on the cinema market in the country.

And these data allow us to say that in recent years the market has changed a lot. More and more viewers watch movies online - on the appropriate web services, plus using the directories of Apple and Google. Russian film companies are unhappy with the fact that online cinemas give producers, including Russian copyright holders, only a small part of the data on watching movies and TV shows.

Therefore, it is proposed to launch an Internet browsing accounting system. The audience counter of the Ministry of Culture and the producers propose to make it mandatory for all legal online cinemas that work in RuNet.

Online services that do not install a counter will be considered illegal - in any case, authors of initiatives rely on this. The scheme will allow you to remove links to such services from the issuance of search engines. The Ministry of Culture, if approved, will develop appropriate amendments to the legislation.

Heads of media companies claim that data on free viewing and buying TV shows and movies on the Internet is very important for producers and television channels. This is necessary to understand how it is better to make money on the network, as well as how the Internet audience perceives certain pictures, how its perception differs from the perception of viewers in movie theaters. Ideally, according to the authors of the system, copyright holders should have access to data on Internet displays not only of their content, but also in the market as a whole.

The data obtained will be used to strengthen the position of producers in negotiations with movie theaters. Now representatives of the domestic film industry believe that the payouts of online cinemas are too small compared to payments to suppliers of foreign content. Owners of online services do not agree, saying that payments to specific producers largely depend on the demand for content.

Before the meeting, representatives of the Association of Film and Television Producers (APKiT) submitted proposals on launching the system to a number of online cinemas.

The description of the new system says that the "meter" of sales of films and series on the Internet is a Russian development, software that collects real-time data on sales and viewing content. Among the data that the producers expect to receive, there are, for example, the number of purchases of a movie or series, the number of views, place of viewing, place of purchase, data on the device of the viewer (i.e. this is a computer, smartphone or smart TV).

According to the producers, installing meters does not require significant effort and expense from online services.

The discussion of the project referred to above began after November 2018, when APKit Volin held a meeting with the participation of producers and online cinemas regarding the possibility of launching an Internet viewing accounting system. Online cinemas then agreed to begin transferring at least some of the data that producers requested.

But then it was said that amendments to the legislation would not be required, plus online cinemas were going to use a very specific system - the counter of the analytical company Nielsen. At the same time, representatives of online services said they only agreed to develop a possible approach to data transfer.

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