With so many companies banning their products and services, or at least shipments, to Russia as a response to its invasion of Ukraine, the country is striking back in a unique fashion by allowing its citizens to pirate media formats of all kinds.
This includes music, movies, TV shows, and video games. This is an attempt to strike back at the US and other countries that have been applying restrictions to imports, online services, and other features relating to these types of media. companies like Disney, Nintendo, Sony, Apple, Google, Netflix, and many others.
Apparently, if companies do not want to play nice with them, they will just steal through bootlegging everything instead. A move that will likely result in continued tension between the country and these companies as well as likely many attempts at lawsuits aimed at it and its citizens that will likely go nowhere since Russia isn’t considering it a crime while these copyright restrictions are dropped on its end (arguable on so many levels).
The Russian government is telling its companies that they won’t have to worry themselves with paying for patents as long as these countries continue to block related goods to its borders. It will be temporarily removing country-wide blocks of websites related to torrents and other services that are aimed at helping users find pirated content. The latter of which has already become popular through use of VPNs to get around these restrictions (which will no longer be necessary).
It seems the country is hell-bent on digging itself a dangerous hole as it continues to make enemies of various countries, organizations, and now companies. There is no doubt that the damages from this are going to stretch out for years as all parties sort out the mess (or at least try to).
Meanwhile, it is quite unfortunate that its citizens have to undergo such stress/burdens from limitations being placed on them due to the violent actions of their government.
