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Digital
Mastercard and US ad industry make commitments to anti-piracy efforts
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 21 December 2010
Both Mastercard and America’s Interactive Advertising Bureau have indicated to US content industry trade bodies that they are happy to play ball in efforts to shut down websites that exist exclusively or primarily to aid copyright infringement, by refusing to take payments from or sell advertising on behalf of such operations.
According to CNET, the two organisations have made the commitments amid lobbying efforts in Washington by music and movie companies to introduce that previously reported proposed legislation that would empower the US Department Of Justice to shut down websites that commit extensive intellectual property infringements.
As previously reported, the proposed new laws on the table in America are similar to the second part of the copyright section of the UK’s Digital Economy Act, and are designed to speed up the process through which content owners can target online operations that undertake or enable copyright infringement. Of course, said content owners can already pursue civil lawsuits against such websites – and have, in the main, been successful when they have done so – but such litigation is expensive and drawn out. The new system would make it much quicker and much cheaper.
It should be noted that this element of the DEA was basically cut at the last minute to ensure three-strikes got through parliament (in that the framework for such a system is still in the Act, but with a ‘maybe we’ll do this one day, maybe we won’t’ clause thrown in). In the US this fast-track infringement action system is being considered in isolation, three-strikes is not currently part of the plan in America.
It has long pissed off content owners when they see legitimate credit card companies or advertising agencies helping copyright infringing websites generate revenue. The former have played ball before, it was the credit card firms refusing to work with AllofMP3.com that basically brought the rogue Russian download service crashing down. And in the latter domain, Google recently said it would better vet users of its AdWords system to ensure advertising money wasn’t being passed to infringers.
Of course, anti-piracy commitments from credit and ad companies only help to an extent, as many copyright infringing services are non-commercial and don’t need to take credit card payments or sell advertising. Though some of those services might want to take donations to cover costs, or may have secret commercial ambitions, or might be seeking investment, and such measures by Mastercard and the IAB may scupper any such plans.
