Piracy PIPCUED to the post?

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has announced that it will target advertisers and brands that provide revenue for pirate sites. A fairly unthreatening sounding ‘Infringing Website List’ is part of the unit’s ‘Operation Creative’ in which the PIPCU partners with creative and advertising industries to paint the pirates by numbers and cut off their oxygen supply- advertising revenue.

This is all good news for the music and other creative industries and Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey thinks so too, saying: “The creative industries are a real UK success story. They are now worth £71.4 billion a year to the UK economy and grew faster than all other sectors of UK industry in 2012. It is essential we protect our creative industries from people ripping off their content online”.

Vaizey continued: “Disrupting the money unlawful websites make from advertising could make a real difference to the fight against copyright infringement. It is an excellent example of what can be achieved through industry, government and law enforcement working together”.

A recent report by the Digital Citizens Alliance estimated that the 30 most popular piracy websites generated over £136m million from advertising last year. The watch list will become a portal providing the digital advertising sector with an up-to-date list of copyright infringing sites, identified by the creative industries and evidenced and verified by the City of London Police unit. This will result in advertisers and agencies being asked to cease placing ads on illegal sites and with names like ‘The Pirate Bay’ and ‘Kick Ass Torrents’ none of these can claim that they didn’t have a clue now, can they?

Of course this isn’t a catch all solution to piracy but what is? After all, three strikes were recently reduced to no strikes in Ireland. This should at least reduce major advertisers popping up on pirate sites, though it will need to be carefully regulated so that legitimate advertisers don’t fall foul for the occasional unintended infringement.