Experts spoke against the draft law on limiting the share of foreign capital in audiovisual services.

Government experts spoke against a bill submitted to the State Duma on limiting the share of foreign capital in audiovisual services, Kommersant reports .

Recall that at the end of October it became known that the Media-Communication Union (MKS), which includes such companies as Gazprom Media, CTC Media and telecom operators MTS, Megafon and VimpelCom, announced for consideration in the State Duma of the draft law on the regulation of audiovisual services, in particular, online cinemas. Later in the course of the discussion of the text of the bill, opinions were advanced that it could force such large foreign services as YouTube to leave Russia .

According to the text of the bill, foreign services for the legal continuation of their activities will be forced to reduce their share to 20%, while the remaining 80% will be sold to Russian companies before July 1, 2017. In this case, it is indicated that the requirement does not apply to services where the user content is mainly located.

The text of the document states that transnational companies will have to single out the Russian segment of their business, and then reduce their share in it to 20%. The experts' conclusion indicates that these companies simply curtail their activities in the territory of the Russian Federation instead of fulfilling the specified requirements.
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Experts point out that such resources as Mail.ru Kino, Mail.Ru Games, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Video, Google Play, AppStore, iTunes and Twitch streaming services fall under the audiovisual services. Why does the latter fall under audiovisual services, while most streams are user-generated content, without specifying it.

Representatives of the MKS occupy only 12% of the audiovisual market. Another 70% is accounted for by online cinemas of various sizes, and 7% by digital distribution platforms. J'son & Partners Consulting specialists, who gave the above figures, believe that the bill is aimed at monopolizing the market by participants with a smaller share. At the same time, the content they offer is 90-95% overlapped by other representatives of the sphere, and the monetization models do not differ.

The operators themselves, included in the ISS, as well as the services controlled by them, are excluded from the action of the amendments as being of strategic importance for the defense and security of the state.

The ISS denies the desire to monopolize the market and talk about the protection of domestic audio-visual online services. “The amendments provide protection not only informational, but also economic, establishing equal rules for working in Russia for both Russian and foreign companies that do not have registered representative offices in the Russian Federation, but profit from Russian users,” an ISS representative said. "Kommersant".

Of the major online cinemas, the amendments primarily cover Ivi.ru and Megogo, which have a Cyprus residence permit. Other audiovisual services have insufficient attendance or belong to the Russians and are registered in the territory of the Russian Federation.

It should be noted that the share of Ivi.ru and Megogo accounts for a serious part of the Russian online cinema market. According to RBC , according to the results of 2015, Ivi.ru revenue exceeded 1 billion rubles, and the service audience totaled 26.8 million users. Megogo's revenue for 2015 amounted to 419.4 million rubles, and the Russian audience - 17.2 million users (with a total of 40 million). At the end of 2015, the analyst called the market for audiovisual services a fast-growing and very promising direction both when using the advertising model and when selling paid content and subscriptions.