The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) based in the City of London Police has called upon advertisers and brand holders to continue to support its work to tackle Intellectual Property crime following the launch of its Infringing Website List (IWL). The IWL, the first of its kind to be developed, sets out to disrupt the advertising revenues on illegal websites globally.

This initiative forms part of the unit's ground-breaking Operation Creative, designed to disrupt and prevent websites from providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content, in partnership with the creative and advertising industries.

The IWL is an online portal providing the digital advertising sector with an up-to-date list of copyright infringing sites, identified by the creative industries and evidenced and verified by the City of London Police unit, so that advertisers, agencies and other intermediaries can cease advert placement on these illegal websites.

Disrupting advertising is a vital part of Operation Creative, as advertising is a key generator of criminal profits for websites providing access to infringing content. A recent report by the Digital Citizens Alliance estimated that in 2013 piracy websites generated $227million from advertising.

The introduction of the IWL follows a three-month pilot that took place last year in collaboration with the Operation Creative partners; the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), The Publishers Association, the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK), the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA) and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

The pilot saw a clear and positive trend, with a 12% reduction in advertising from major household brands on the identified illegal websites. The pilot also revealed that almost half (46%) of ads served to the sites clicked through to fraudulent scams.

PIPCU told TF-TorrebtFreak that the blacklist will not be made public."All sites on IWL are identified and evidenced as infringing by rights holders and then verified by PIPCU. [...] The List will be ever changing as new sites appear and older sites comply."

Story filed 13.04.14