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Business News Digital
Tech giants sign anti-piracy commitment in Denmark
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 12 May 2015
Google and Microsoft have signed up to a new ‘memorandum of understanding’ in Denmark making a commitment to work with content owners, internet service providers and payment processing firms on anti-piracy initiatives, and to promote legitimate content services. Though presumably Google doesn’t interpret that signature as a commitment to exiling piracy sites from its search engine, the one big fat thing the copyright industries would really like it to do.
The new anti-piracy initiative in Denmark has been led by the country’s Ministry Of Culture, and consists of a bunch of much less specific commitments on the part of the signatories. According to Torrentfreak, the five main aims are as follows:
1. To help make the internet a safe and legal platform for consumers and businesses.
2. To stress that copyright is an important cornerstone for growth and innovation.
3. To work together to reduce financial crime, based on copyright violations.
4. To work together to promote the dissemination of legal products.
5. To contribute to efficient processes that can help to reduce copyright violations and associated crimes.
While developing some kind of three-strikes system or a more efficient web-blocking process might help the net sector achieve point five, it seems likely that the initiative will do more on point three, adopting the ‘follow the money’ approach to piracy whereby payment processors and ad sellers commit to ensure they aren’t taking payments or selling ads on behalf of websites that primarily exist to encourage or enable copyright infringement.
The Danish cultural ministry said in a statement: “This code reflects a common desire to make a determined effort to ensure that the internet is a safe and economically sustainable marketplace. It will help to create better conditions for growth and innovation for legitimate businesses, and security and transparency for the users”.