Over the past two months, the number of pirated and fake online cinemas in the Russian segment of the Internet has almost doubled, Kommersant reports citing data from cybersecurity companies.

Most often, offenders use domains with the word Kinopoisk, to which they add a few extra letters (around 60 registered, compared to 30 in August in September).

Other video services - ivi, Netflix, Okko, Megogo - are becoming the object of imitators as well. However, the latter noted that they did not observe the growth of fake and pirate sites similar to their platforms. Kinopoisk specialists, on the other hand, are aware of the situation and regularly block fake resources.

Experts note that fake domains are usually created for several days, and after they are blocked, the owners register new ones by simply adding other letters. Moreover, there are also fraudulent sites created to steal payment and personal data. Such domains often use the words kino, film, serials. This helps offenders to more effectively promote their resources in search engines, at least until they are removed.

Some analysts believe that the rise in pirated and fraudulent content has been driven by the pandemic and restrictions on movie theaters in several regions. As follows from the report of Group-IB, in 2020 the market of Internet piracy in Russia amounted to $59 million.

Earlier, the Russian government supported a draft law on extrajudicial measures to combat pirate websites. The initiative provides an opportunity for copyright holders to create information systems that will contain databases of indexes of pages with content that infringes copyright. Roskomnadzor will maintain a special register of such systems.