In the language of Captain Jack Sparrow, in the ocean of illegal digital content, Russia is the Flying Dutchman, a legendary, unsinkable and immortal ship currently preparing for a new great journey. The phenomenon of cultural piracy on the territory of our country (and in the CIS countries in general) due to socio-cultural conditions has a rich history, which received a new round of development: who among us did not download anything? Have Hollywood movie studios and Netflix stopped their work in Russia because of the sanctions? And while “unlicensed” at the official level is strictly prohibited and punishable by law, it is impossible not to mention a resurgence of piracy in 2022. Unblocking RuTracker, the largest “pirate” site in the country, and the request of the Ministry of Digital Development to address this phenomenon with “understanding” (although its legalization is not supported by the ministry) cannot be called a coincidence. . How did a huge cultural layer called “piracy” arise, change, rise and fall in Russia?
Eighties and nineties on cassettes with monophonic translation
In general, the history of piracy in Russia has been going on for more than ten years, and the rare 80s could not play a decisive role in the emergence of a new large-scale cultural layer: Soviet cinema of the perestroika era, although bolder, did not meet the needs of the audience. Boasting just that moment with Back to the Future (1985), The Taming of the Shrew (1980), Rain Man (1988) and The Terminator (1984), foreign cinema was in great demand – one on one, to peek behind the iron curtain that was just being opened. It was an opportunity, while Western cinema offered a fundamentally new level of special effects, storyline, and scale.
In the Soviet Union there was only one way to see it with your own eyes – underground. Copies of Western tapes (these can be copies for journalists and foreign television recordings) were delivered to the “exits” of the USSR, sounded and dispersed as much as possible, although not always successfully. The latter, along with VCRs, would later become one of the main symbols of the late 80s.
As VHS spread, video theaters emerged, and by the early 90s piracy had emerged as a distinct aspect of Soviet film culture, with a well-established mechanism and stars of its own. Many of those who made that era should perfectly remember the legendary monophonic translation of Leonid Volodarsky, the voices of Alexei Mikhalev, Andrey Gavrilov, Vasily Gorchakov, who opened the “back” of Western action movies, comedies, science fiction films and other content. “to the audience. He was not very appreciated for his high level (even the lowest-budget and unsuccessful films were used), but for the opportunity to see what was forbidden in principle in Soviet times: for example, the anti-Soviet “Red Dawn” Patrick Swayze, “Emmanuel” for adults, or the erotic drama Last Tango in Paris.
“Every new thing that can be obtained or stolen legally has been copied.”
“Of course, everyone was fascinated by new blockbusters, but someone liked the classics more, someone mastered incredibly popular films about karate (banned in the USSR. note. ed.) and someone turned to cheap pornography,” says Vasily Gorchakov (Look At Me).
From enthusiasts who first began to master tapes, he recalls that businessmen later grew up, equipping video theaters with new content and making a lot of money on it: “In the late 80s the state was already weak and could not target them. ” However, the copycats really had reason to be afraid at that moment: “In the mid-80s, one of them was sentenced to a year and a half in prison for distributing Emmanuel. Somewhere in the mid-’90s, years after he was released from prison, we even arranged for him to have a touching interview with Sylvia Kristel. He couldn’t believe he had gotten a term for the movie, which he didn’t see as some kind of terrible evil.
Over time, video theaters began to lose their relevance (mainly due to the fact that every apartment already has a personal video recorder and tapes were passed from hand to hand), and then retrained in film distribution companies that rented cassettes. With them, the first thematic magazines appeared, lists of the most popular cassette films, the most beloved actors – Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were definitely in the rating – and a large-scale pirate community settled in Gorbushka.
Golden Age of Piracy
Officially, the fight against piracy was proclaimed in 1993 by enacting the law “On the Protection of Copyright and Related Rights”, but this did not greatly affect the situation: the tapes not only disappeared, but seemed to have increased many times over. over.
According to law enforcement, 9 out of 10 videotapes sold in the country were pirated.
At the same time, the entry of foreign cinema into the country was developing at the official level: contacts were established with Hollywood studios, foreign films began to be shown in theaters, and the first distributors appeared. The 2000s were marked by much greater cultural freedom, but the pirates survived – earning several times the price of the licensed content that came out.
While the prosecutor tried to snatch pirates by the hand (but in many cases this was a useless exercise due to the lack of a common methodological approach to such investigations), they continued to capture the market: DVDs replaced VHS, VCRs. replaced with players.
The copies up to this time were almost indistinguishable from licensed versions, even by the covers, plus their trump card was responsiveness: it’s not uncommon for high-profile premieres to appear on film distributors’ shelves a few weeks before the official premiere. How is this possible? The so-called screens came into use – films recorded directly on the camera in the movie theater (for example, in America) and translated in Russia. By the way, about the translation: Dmitry Goblin Puchkov and his voiceover “goblin” became an important symbol of piracy in the early 2000s, the hallmark of which is obscene language and parodies, and the prefix “in translation”. Goblin” almost stood out as a separate species.
Of course, piracy has reached a qualitatively new stage in its evolution with the development of the Internet: both the screens in CAMRip format mentioned above, and the hacker community, which now lives on the forums, migrated there. The most important moment of this period was the establishment of the site Torrents.ru, which will become RuTracker.org in the future, in 2004. The distribution of unlicensed content was going through one of the best periods in its history, especially as “Lost,” “Breaking Bad,” “Doctor House,” and other multi-part series drove millions of people around the world literally crazy. They were officially released in Russia, but with a delay after its premiere in the West, so sites that do it faster, albeit illegally, have gained huge user popularity.
“We were the first to perform Lost in Russia with twelve actors: in the morning the series was broadcast in America, and by the evening it was already watched here. Nobody did that,” Andrey Kravets, founder of Lostfilm, tells Look At Me. – The Internet and fan translations have boosted the foreign drama market in Russia. Before that, they were not interested in anyone. Even Gorbushka did not want to pirate serials at that time, because it is expensive – how many disks are needed.
Doctor House became popular not with the Domashny TV channel, but thanks to the Internet.
return of the legend
The golden age of piracy in Russia came to an end in the early 10’s and with the emergence of streaming platforms and online cinemas that exploded into a bombshell. From niche festival films to major blockbusters, foreign films and TV series are now available in one click, in 1080p quality, with dubbed translations and most importantly without annoying ads.
Netflix, which became the series leader at that time, offered all the episodes of the season in Russian dubbing to its subscribers at once, while Amediateka, the official representative of HBO in Russia, broadcast Game of Thrones simultaneously with the world. at the premiere, the platforms offered free trial subscriptions, discounts and completely democratic prices.
In general, paying 500 rubles conditionally has become more profitable than endless surfing on Kinopab or Netflix (large-scale sites with pirated content).
Modern digital platforms – fast, convenient and often personalized – viewers got used to licensed content, so pirated copies were no longer needed. Cinema lost the exclusivity inherent in the Soviet era, but became more accessible to the mass audience. The era of screens has sunk into oblivion. Even stranger, in 2022, Warner Bros. It was because he was collecting parts from Batman, which was released in Russia. Canceled on the web or suspended the second season of Bridgertons on Netflix but also for users from Russia, but search on a Google request: “Watch The Bridgertons season 2 in good quality.” Against the background of cancellations of official releases by Hollywood studios and platforms, piracy can easily become a new “must have” for the modern audience – in an environment where nothing else remains, even the good old “Torrent” no longer looks what it used to be. something wild. How will it and the culture of piracy continue to exist, and what will they offer to a user spoiled by official content? Time will show us.
Source: People Talk
