Tackling Online Piracy

Yesterday, NLA media access co-hosted a seminar with the PPA on tackling online piracy of publisher content. Copyright Infringement is happening on a global scale across many different types of content and there are a number of industry wide initiatives which have been set up to deal with this problem. A wide range of publishers attended including EMAP and Euromonitor.

We heard from PIPCU, the City of London Police’s dedicated copyright enforcement team. PIPCU work with a number of partners in their ‘Operation Creative’ which aims to stop advertising on illegal sites. They have seen much success recently with a 73% drop in UK advertising on these infringing websites. We also heard from Publisher’s Association, a membership organisation who represent the rights of books, journals and audio publishers. Currently, the Publishers Association are tackling the large scale infringement problem using their Copyright Infringement Portal which aims to streamline the takedown submission process for publishers.

Finally, the NLA spoke about Online Article Tracking System (OATS) which tracks online infringement of publisher content. Currently 6 of the national newspaper publishers take part collectively in the service and it currently runs at 83% take down rate. Much of the success is down to educating infringers on what can or can’t be copied and the correct use of publisher content on websites. In this way, we see there is an opportunity for magazine publishers to benefit from this service. For more information, email publisherservices@nla.co.uk