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What right holders are so concerned about in Russia in relation to new features of legal services?

Different services and companies in Russia clear copyright in content like music or video in order to provide their services consisting of entertainment content. The price for rights can be very high and the company, acquiring opportunity to use copyright protected content in its services, does not have any guarantee that its investments can be recouped.

If users don’t pay money for use of content, how company makes money on its service? It could be advertisement. But advertisement does not make a lot of money. Advertisement in Russia is very cheap. And there should be a lot of advertisement on such service like Yandex.Music. Moreover many users have installed applications blocking advertisement. If advertisement has been not consumed, does it mean that it did not make any Russian rouble for service and subsequently for right holder?

What Yandex.Music did do else in order to recoup its investments? It has cooperated with mobile operators and subscribers of mobile operators can listen music, placed on Yandex, on their mobile devices under the brand of relevant mobile operator. And they pay to mobile operator.

For example, services like YouTube, Vkontakte allow users to upload music and videos. Russian mobile operators allow almost the same. What it means. There is a service where subscriber of mobile operator can acquire a service like ring-back-tone (music instead of unified waiting signal). But monthly price for this service is not attractive for the user. What he can do else and what operator proposes to user.

User can take its own music (nobody will check whether rights in music belong to user and whether user has all necessary permissions in order to use it in certain way), upload it to the services and pay to mobile operator for technical opportunity provided in order to listen user’s music as ring-back-tone. Yandex introduced similar feature. Whether it is implemented certain technical measures preventing copyright infringement? Only company providing such service knows it.

Yandex claims new feature is intended only for independent performers. But right holders are not so satisfied and happy. How they can be sure that such features are and will be not used for copyright infringement and company will not avoid paying royalties due to right holders under licence agreements or avoid concluding licencing agreements with new right holders. Who can control and know for sure what music is used by subscribers – only company, having contractual relationships with such subscribers.

Yandex states it has implemented the system similar to Content ID. If the user has uploaded musical track and it matches with digital mark from Yandex database then Yandex will pay to right holders whose phonograms have been uploaded. But have mobile operators done the same in relation to their services, when their subscribers upload music?