Police in London are starting to put anti-piracy warnings on websites that illegally offer unauthorized content.
The move comes as another method to prevent piracy sites from using advertising to make money, according to BBC News. The warnings will replace paid-for advertisements, and users will be asked to close their web browsers. Police said the ads would make it more difficult for owners of these sites to give their page an authentic look.
"When adverts from well-known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Andy Fyfe, detective chief inspector from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU).
"This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal ports."
The PIPCU's initiative is called Operation Creative, and was launched in response to a call in April for advertisers to join a plan for preventing piracy sites from accessing ad revenue in order to combat content piracy, TechCrunch reported.
If the PIPCU receives a submission from rightholders that a site is infringing IP, the site will be put on the Infringing Websites List (IWL), and a verification process will be conducted to determine if the site will stay on the list. The unit said it is working with the BPI, FACT, IFPI and the Publisher's Association to make sure the IWL stays up-to-date.
"The rightholders have to put together a very detailed evidential package," said a PIPCU spokeswoman. "Which is then looked at by the detectives here, and then they make the decision whether to verify if it's copyright infringing. So it's a very robust, long process. That way we are confident that the websites on the IWL are copyright infringing."
Operation Creative looks to find these sites with help from Project Sunblock's technology. The company is used by major brands to keep ads from appearing with pirated material, pornography and other questionable content, BBC News reported.
Project Sunblock finds content in websites to make sure ads from brands don't appear in places they don't want them to. The firm will serve a police warning when a site on the IWL attempts to show an ad.
The spokeswoman said the PIPCU has already named close to 70 websites on the IWL, TechCrunch reported.
"What we really want to do with this is we're asking [infringing websites] to engage with us, and we're giving them enough time to legitimize themselves, correcting their behavior- it's kind of a new innovative policing, rather than going and arresting people, it's a different way of dealing with this stuff," she said. "If someone is going to correct their behavior it would be unfair if they had been publicly put out there in the media."
