The companies demand more cooperation from copyright holders since, they say, it is too hard to control piracy alone. For example, sites like YouTube get 24 hours of video uploaded every minute, which they say is simply too much to monitor.

If there is a violation of a copyright, the companies will freeze the video or audio file in question but then direct the copyright holder to the person who actually uploaded it instead of getting involved themselves.

The giants also complain about the lack of appropriate legislation on the topic.

“The problem of responsibility for sharing copyrighted content isn't new,” Ekaterina Fadeeva, director of Yandex.ru’s legal department, told RT. “As it hasn't been decided on the legislative level, the courts have become decisive in such cases. But that's not the right path.”

Fadeeva says that the position of web giants is not opposed to that of copyright holders, and they are open for cooperation.

“We are open to dialogue and prefer not to use aggressive means to solve these problems. Some schemes have been working successfully for a while now. For example, when an author complains to a web platform that's hosting his material illegally, it gets deleted,”Fadeeva said.

For their part, copyright holders say that the companies intentionally create a comfortable environment for pirates. They believe that if the giants are making money on illegal downloads, they could at least share this money with the authors.

Meanwhile, Russia’s State Duma has recently adopted a bill stipulating far stricter licensing requirements for producers of optical media with content protected by copyright.