Google Looks To Cut Funds To Illegal Piracy Sites
Alongside financial powerhouses Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal, Google is orchestrating an effort to cut funding to illegal download sites. The ultimate goal is to eradicate illegitimate sites providing illegal music and movie downloads.
For the past decade, the uploading and downloading of copyrighted materials through peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing has become increasingly popular. However, the act of sourcing and downloading this material costs movie and music industries millions, and in turn creates a legal headache for those caught violating copyright infringement.
Instead of having to internally alter search results, demoting illegal sites, the internet search engine Google is considering instead to hit the root of the source of pirated material online by shutting off financing, reports BBC News. If Google is successful, it will mark the first time an illegal website was driven out of business by having its funds blocked.
In a July 2012 commissioned report, both Google and PRS for Music reviewed potential methods for inhibiting copyright infringement. PRS for Music, a UK copyright society, was formed in 1997 and branded in 2009 as the MCPS-PRS Alliance, bringing together two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and Performing Right Society (PRS).
Data for “The Six Business Models for Copyright Infringement” was collected from companies like The British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) and The Publishers Association. The report noted a section on payment and card processors, highlighting 69 percent of the sites examined did have logos for credit card and or electronic payment processors. The information was not used with the assumption the finance companies were actively aware of the illicit use of the funds, but simply used as a payment collection on the illegal websites.
With the growing popularity of On Demand and online streaming services, there are several legal alternatives to downloading.
[Image via Shutterstock]
