www.musicweek.com BODYTALKBPI MISSION IMPOSSIBLE? PIRACY BY DAVID WOOD, BPI DIRECTOR OF ANTI-PIRACY M
emorandums of Understanding. Government roundtables. Panel discussions like Google’s ‘Big Tent’. These
are useful initiatives which bring creators, the tech community and internet commentators together to discuss closer cooperation to reduce illegal downloading. But whilst industry lives through seemingly
endless delays in Government implementing or proposing new legislation, and awaits concrete outcomes from the voluntary talks, those of us working to reduce piracy “on the frontline” must take concrete action to protect the content of musicians online. BPI’s Anti-Piracy Unit – which represents BPI,
AIM and PPL members – has developed partnerships far and wide across the UK, from Trading Standards and the Crown Office in Scotland to the local Police Authorities and Government agencies. Our critics ask if we’re really making any
difference. We believe we’re making progress. Since the turn of the year, we’ve seen the fruits
of our new delisting programme with Google. The initiative allows us to remove links to infringing music content which can be found by consumers in the results returned by the search engine giant. We have notified over 160,000 illegal links for
takedown this month alone. And we are continuing to step up the programme. You can see its impact in the many ‘Chilling Effects’ notices that now appear at the bottom of search pages. Moreover, our robots continue to crawl the web
to take down pirate content at its source. Since the beginning of January, we’ve have notified almost four million files for removal (mainly from file hosting sites or “cyberlockers”). Our target this year is to exceed 12 million illegal files. In the last few weeks Rapidgator – one of the
world’s most popular illegal file hosting services – was taken offline following a joint investigation with the City of London Police. The cyberlocker had grown rapidly in scale, following the takedown of Megaupload, and at the time represented approximately 80% of illegal music downloads IFPI identified globally. And of course we have obtained court orders requiring the biggest UK ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. Virgin Media is already doing so. But we can’t rest on our laurels. As virtual crime
becomes more sophisticated, we must think of other techniques to frustrate those who seek to profit at
the expense of everyone in the music industry. We are working with the Internet Advertising
Bureau to implement a programme to ensure that major brands and advertising networks don’t support major pirate sites; and we already write direct to brands that do so. With IFPI, we are working with payment providers to ensure they don’t process payments for known illegal sites either. Our latest partnership with the UK’s “go to”
department for tackling fraud, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), will go a long way in bolstering our anti-piracy efforts. It’s a unique collaboration. And a valuable recognition of the excellence of our internet investigations team. It is the first time the NFIB has seconded an experienced analyst into private industry to better
ABOVE Making progress: The BPI is stepping up its anti-piracy programme – with Rapidgator and The Pirate Bay amongst the casualties. Meanwhile, Google (right) received over 160,000 copyright takedown requests from the BPI in May
Why partnerships beween music and technology companies are vital in tackling piracy – and why the BPI says its latest venture with the UK’s lead force on fraud investigations is like no other
01.06.12 MusicWeek 21
understand the scale of the threat posed by specific types of crime. It will do a great deal to help NFIB understand the serious challenges posed by Intellectual Property Crime (IPC) to the growth of our sector. Detective Superintendent Dave Clark, Head of
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retail data, company market shares, sales by type of music, pricing and the world market.
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NFIB said: “As the director of the NFIB, I recognised the forward thinking and proactive approach of the BPI in their drive to disrupt and dismantle the perpetrators of crimes which go far deeper in causing harm to the UK and beyond than people might realise at first sight”. He added, “I took the view that the
opportunity of building upon the rich data sets and valued partnerships we already have in the NFIB would benefit both parties and take us forward to reach new understandings in relation to both cyber and overseas threats from criminals exploiting IP rights.” With such intelligence in hand, we will work
with the NFIB to develop a blueprint which will focus on tackling IP crime. It is our hope that this will feed in to the National Threat Assessment and influence the national policing priorities as set by the Home Office. With economic prosperity at the forefront of the Exchequer’s mind, Government across all departments must recognise the importance of protecting intellectual property. It may be a virtual problem, but cyber-crime is a real economic challenge for this country.
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