The volume of pirated content online in Russia increased by 10% in 2018, which was the slowest growth in recent years, and down compared to the 12% seen in 2017, Vedomosti daily reported on June 7 citing the estimates of Group IB presented at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

However, the share of pirated content on mobile devices increased to 31% from 23%, with the increase of pirate mobile traffic of 40% in absolute volumes.

Piracy is actively being rooted out in Russia, the second biggest consumer of digital pirated content in the world with 20.6bn visits to pirate sites in 2017. In November 2018 Russian TV holdings, online streaming services, and largest content producers signed a landmark anti-piracy memorandum.

The biggest achievement of the agreement is the commitment of internet major Yandex to remove links with pirated content from its search results. Russian rights holders and producers reportedly celebrated another major victory having forced online streaming platforms to start using the Nielsen database as a united system for recording the number of online views.