In the latest effort to control online piracy, a new US scheme intends to ban all the Google ads containing pirated content on the internet. According to Victoria Espinel, coordinator of US Intellectual Property Enforcement, this scheme will make a positive development in reducing online piracy by not allowing the websites to display ads offering any pirated contents.
This new scheme will allow the copyright holders of film, music or any other industries to alert networks of the ads that offer links to any counterfeit goods or pirated contents. This will be a big blow to all the pirate sites which makes a lot of money through Google and many other advertisers as millions of users frequently visit these sites each and every month.
Moreover, following in the footsteps of this latest US scheme to ban Google ads with any kind of pirated contents, the music industry of Great Britain is also working on a scheme along with the Internet Advertising Bureau of UK which will have a large database of ad networks, piracy sites, agencies and brands engaged in pirated activities. This central database containing all the necessary information about online piracy will prevent other sites from showing ads that contain links to any kind of pirated contents.
A British site called ‘Surfthechannel’ offered links to pirated contents and made almost 35,000 pounds within a month by showing on-site ads before the owner of the site was arrested and finally jailed for online piracy. However, before the trial, some emails from The Pirate Bay were discovered which showed that the site was offered a staggering amount of 65,000 pounds per month for running ads of casinos and pokers.
These kind of sites use ads as revenue source since this practice allows them to earn a lot of money without even setting up any kind of merchant accounts with the common merchant organizations like the PayPal, Mastercard or Visa. Therefore, in order to prevent such cases in the future, the new US scheme will compel the networks to implement some compulsory guidelines for preventing appearance of ads which are accused of digital piracy and counterfeiting of goods. However, it is still not clear how this scheme will prevent the ads which are not reported by the right holders but even blocking the reported sites from showing up in Google can be a huge step in controlling the ubiquitous online piracy. So, it seems like this new scheme will prove to be effective to a great extent in blocking ads promoting pirated and fake contents all over the internet.
