RuTracker is blocked, but the number of downloaded torrents has not changed

Since the moment the officials decided to “forever” block the largest bittraent tracker in Russia, RuTracker, more than a year has passed. Of course, the blocking could not but affect the attendance of the resource - at the beginning of 2016 it became clear that it had fallen. Nevertheless, the site feels good - the number of downloads of torrents has not changed much since the moment of blocking. The tracker does not even think of closing, as the initiators of blocking counted on. According to officials, after the measures taken, the number of visitors to the site should have decreased, after which advertisers would refuse Rutracker. Accordingly, without financial support the resource could not work.

“In the first few days and weeks — while the media are writing about blocking Rutracker — the Barbra Streisand Effect is in effect, and users go to a resource to check if it is blocked or not. The real drop in attendance can only be traced after three months, when only regular visitors who are interested in using the portal even after it is blocked will remain on the resource, Vadim Ampelonsky, spokesman for Roskomnadzor, said after the introduction of measures. A year later, you can give a real assessment of the situation, understanding what has changed and to what extent.

Representatives of the tracker told about the current situation in an interview with Apparat online media. According to the administration of the resource, attendance has dropped, but the audience has decreased slightly. In addition, the dynamics of file sharing remained almost unchanged - the number of files downloaded per unit of time did not decrease.
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As far as can be judged, the number of visits to the resource of users of mobile devices has significantly decreased. The problem is that it’s more difficult to bypass a lock on a mobile device than on a PC. On a laptop or computer, you can configure blocking bypass in a couple of clicks, so even users who are not too sophisticated in computer technology and software can cope with this task.

And the maximum number of downloads is carried out just by PC users, and not by those who access the tracker from mobile devices. Every day about a million files are downloaded from the tracker, this indicator has not changed since the moment of blocking.

An interesting point is that after blocking the site in Russia, the amount of work for the Rutracker administration has decreased. The fact is that communication with copyright holders from Russia used to take a lot of effort, time and resources. And now, since the site is blocked in the country, all cooperation with domestic copyright holders is terminated. “Once the site is blocked entirely, then there are no grounds for complaints. On the territory of Russia, the site is inoperable and cannot, by definition, violate someone’s rights, ”said one of the representatives of the administration of the resource.



As for foreign right holders, work with them is underway, but there are practically no complaints from them.

Another point that may affect the operation of Rutracker is the possible blocking of the “mirrors” of sites, the introduction of which has been for many months now. This is quite realistic. On March 17, the State Duma considered amendments to the laws “On Information ...”, adopting in the first reading the moments regarding the resolution of blocking “mirrors” of sites prohibited in the territory of the Russian Federation. The author of the document, which was considered by the State Duma - the Ministry of Communications. The main purpose of the introduction of blocking is called "preventing the illegal distribution and use of audiovisual works on the Internet." That is, we are talking about the possibility of quickly suppressing the distribution of "illegal" content.

Earlier, representatives of various courts of the Russian Federation stated that they could not order to block the “mirrors” of any sites, since the legal interpretation of the concept of “mirror” itself was missing. Now the new term “derivative site on the Internet” is introduced for “mirrors” of sites. And this step just allows you to block "derivative sites" in the pretrial order. All you need is a court order, for which you only need a formal appeal to the court without the need for a hearing. If amendments are adopted, search services operating in the territory of the Russian Federation will be required to filter search results. This applies to both "Yandex" and Google.

According to the administration of Rutracker, amendments to the resource are not terrible. There are a lot of Russian-speaking users outside of the Russian Federation, so even if access to a resource on the territory of Russia can be blocked completely, the site will live and work.

As for the “eternal” blocking, Rutracker will not fight with it. Roskomsvoboda tried to cope with it, but this organization, which employs professional lawyers, did not succeed. So while no action in this direction is not planned.



There is a Rutracker still out of funds from banner advertising. This is still the only source of income for the site. “Since Rutreker was never positioned as a business project, the amount of advertising we have is limited, much less than on similar sites. We don’t have any other ways to monetize: we don’t have anything to do with the content that users exchange, and the website is filled by the users themselves, ”said one of the administrators. He added that the resource is balanced on the verge of payback.

Funding, however, is enough for the work of five employees. These are, first of all, programmers and system administrators. It can be assumed that the management of the tracker receives some funds, but nothing was said about this. Hired experts receive a salary, being engaged in the technical side of the project. Administrative work is carried out by enthusiasts - this is the administrators of the forum and about 200 moderators.

According to representatives of the tracker, now the resource is not just a place where people share files, but to a certain extent self-regulating social network. In general, the site continues to live and work. Perhaps we can say that the blocking did not reach the goal set by the officials - Rutracker is flourishing.