Online cinemas will be tagged against pirates

The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation has prepared amendments to the Law on Cinematography, which provide for special tags in search engines for legal online cinemas.

Producers, Internet companies, and officials came up with the idea of such ​​tagging after much debate about how to restrict pirates in search results.

According to Olga Lyubimova, Director of the Department of Cinematography at the Ministry of Culture, they expect that such tags will affect the conscious choice of the audience in favor of legal sites.

Restricting pirate sites from online cinemas is a matter of two laws. The first law is being drafted jointly by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media (‘Roskomnadzor’) and the Media and Communications Union; it is expected that it will be an updated version of the anti-piracy law. The Ministry of Culture is working on the second document. The agency plans to oblige online cinemas to report on user views of content, the same as offline platforms do.

The services that will transmit information on the views, the Ministry will record in a special registry of legal sites. Such online cinemas will receive a special tag (or mark) in the search engines.