A division of London’s police department is using a blunt tool in its efforts to combat piracy: clear, direct, blatant messaging.
The City of London Police’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, or PIPCU, is engaging in a campaign where it replaces a site’s banner ads with a message which warns users that the site is the subject of a criminal investigation for copyright infringement. The messages will also advise the user to leave the site immediately.
The City of London Police says that the sites that display these banners are ones that have been reported to PIPCU by copyright holders. The reports are accompanied by a set of evidence which details how the site or sites named in the report facilitates copyright infringement.
This is part of an anti-piracy campaign that PIPCU calls Operation Creative, which has both the creative and advertising industries as partners.
“This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits,” Andy Fyfe, who heads up PIPCU, says. “Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative.”
It will be interesting to see whether these messages will scare people away from sites that infringe on copyrights, and whether other law enforcement agencies around the world adopt similar measures.
