Earlier this week, Ivi.ru, a leading video streaming site, announced it has reached agreements with all relevant copyright owners in Holywood, including 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and Universal.
These agreements, which were reported by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, will allow Ivi.ru to enlarge its video catalog from 65,000 to almost 68,000 content items.
Ivi.ru makes more than 97% of its content available for free, but a small part is reserved for the paid subscribers of its service ivi+, which was launched earlier this year. The premium service already caters to “dozens of thousands of users,” RIA Novosti quoted Ivi.ru’s General Manager Oleg Tumanov as saying, although the free, ad-funded offers remain the company’s core business.
Among other ad-funded video streaming sites are Tvigle.ru and Zoomby.ru, not to mention the virtually unlimited amount of video content from all countries being shared, often illegally, by the users of Vkontakte.ru, Russia’s leading social network.
