city of london police – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "city of london police"

from the mine-mine-mine! dept

In the pantheon of aggressive intellectual property bullies, Disney certainly would be one of the companies that would be competing to be Zeus. Disney has simply never seen an opportunity for IP enforcement that it hasn’t acted upon, be it copyright, trademark, or anywhere in between. More to the point for this post, Disney also has this fun mindset that even if it isn’t going to use an IP it owns, it doesn’t like it if anyone else does, either. On the topic of copyright specifically, this would represent a full departure from the purpose of copyright law: to encourage the creation and release of content in exchange for a temporary monopoly on that content.

Remember Club Penguin? That was the name of an online game/community, once independent, which Disney acquired in 2007 and spent the following decade running directly into the ground. The site and service, once beloved by the public, was fully shut down in 2017. Disney attempted to use the Club Penguin name by releasing a mobile app version of Club Penguin called Club Penguin Island. That mobile app was panned by Club Penguin fans and was shut down in 2018, a little over a year after its release.

But fans of the original independent Club Penguin lived on. In 2020, a group of fans released Club Penguin Online, run by fans in a completely unlicensed scenario. Disney fired off DMCA notices and got CPO taken down. To be fair to Disney, many at the time postulated that these actions were due to some extremely gross and illegal predatory behavior that was being conducted upon children on the CPO servers by some users. But to be fair to the law, that isn’t what copyright is for. There are already other laws designed to deal with such predators.

Besides, it’s 2022 and here we are all over again, with Disney working with City of London police not only to get another Club Penguin fan-run site shut down, but to actually get three individuals running it arrested.

In an emailed statement to TechCrunch, Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police said:

“Following a complaint under copyright law, PIPCU have seized a gaming website as part of an ongoing investigation into the site. Three people were arrested on April 12 on suspicion of distributing materials infringing copyright and searches were carried out. They have been released under investigation and to aid with the police investigation, they agreed to sign over the website to the control of PIPCU.”

Note the total lack of any accusation of racism, terrorism, or child predatory behavior in that statement. By all accounts, there doesn’t seem to be any indication here that this has anything to do with anything beyond Disney enforcing its copyright for Club Penguin. A copyright that, by the by, it has done absolutely nothing with for several years now.

In other words, Disney isn’t going to use this IP, and the public can’t use it either. So who gets to play the beloved Club Penguin in any form? Nobody, that’s who. Why? Because Disney would rather choose to enforce its copyright on a moldy piece of culture rather than let anyone else enjoy the meal.

And, we shouldn’t let the City of London police off the hook here either. Their actions have been well documented on Techdirt’s pages before. As everyone will remind you, this is not the Metropolitan Police Service in London. This is a law enforcement arm of “the City of London” which is a one-square mile chunk in the middle of London, where that police force long ago decided that it was going to become Hollywood’s personal thugs. They have a long history of overly aggressively attacking the internet, assuming everyone is a criminal. They have literally claimed that 90% of the internet is a risk to society. They’ve been able to inject “this website has been reported to the police” onto websites with no due process. They’ve arrested people on sketchy logic before. They’ve tried to argue that domain registrars are criminally liable for actions done by websites. And they’ve had some of their previous fever dream arrest cases over copyright fall apart.

Basically, they’re the police force that Hollywood has always wanted, and they’re happy to oblige, without ever recognizing that the world isn’t what they think it is, and some fans remembering a community they loved, even one owned by Disney, is not a criminal offense.

Again, this is the opposite of the intention of copyright law. Copyright wasn’t designed to refuse the public access to culture. It was designed to promote more access to culture by the public. It seems that this is yet another example of a design flaw within the law — and it’s sad that the City of London Police are so happy to abuse their power to lock people up to continue to pervert the intention of copyright law.

Filed Under: arrests, city of london police, club penguin, copyright, criminal copyright, fan site, pipcu
Companies: disney

City Of London Police Parrot Academic Publishers' Line That People Visiting Sci-Hub Should Be Afraid, Very Afraid

from the just-a-coincidence? dept

Techdirt has been following the saga of the City of London Police’s special “Intellectual Property Crime Unit” (PIPCU) since it was formed back in 2013. It has not been an uplifting story. PIPCU seems to regard itself as Hollywood’s private police force worldwide, trying to stop copyright infringement online, but without much understanding of how the Internet works, or even regard for the law, as a post back in 2014 detailed. PIPCU rather dropped off the radar, until last week, when its dire warnings about a new, deadly threat to the wondrous world of copyright were picked up by a number of gullible journalists. PIPCU’s breathless press release reveals the shocking truth: innocent young minds are being encouraged to access knowledge, funded by the public, as widely as possible. Yes, PIPCU has discovered Sci-Hub:

Sci-Hub obtains the papers through a variety of malicious means, such as the use of phishing emails to trick university staff and students into divulging their login credentials. Sci Hub then use this to compromise the university’s network and download the research papers.

That repeats an unsubstantiated claim about Sci-Hub that has frequently been made by academic publishers. And simply using somebody’s login credentials does not constitute “compromising” the university’s network, since at most it gives access to course details and academic papers: believe it or not, students are not generally given unrestricted access to university financial or personnel systems. The press release goes on:

Visitors to the site are very vulnerable to having their credentials stolen, which once obtained, are used by Sci-Hub to access further academic journals for free, and continue to pose a threat to intellectual property rights.

This is complete nonsense. It was obviously written by someone who has never accessed Sci-Hub, since there is no attempt anywhere to ask visitors for any information about anything. The site simply offers friction-free access to 85 million academic papers — and not “70 million” papers as the press release claims, further proof the author never even looked at the site. Even more ridiculous is the following:

With more students now studying from home and having more online lectures, it is vital universities prevent students accessing the stolen information on the university network. This will not only prevent the universities from having their own credentials stolen, but also those of their students, and potentially the credentials of other members of the households, if connected to the same internet provider.

When students are studying from home, they won’t be using the university network if they access Sci-Hub, but their own Internet connection. And again, even if they do visit, they won’t have their credentials “stolen”, because that’s not how the site works. And the idea that members of the same household could also have their “credentials” stolen simply by virtue of being connected to the same Internet provider is so wrong you have to wonder whether the person writing it even knows how the modern (encrypted) Internet works.

But beyond the sheer wrongness of the claims being made here, there’s another, more interesting aspect. Techdirt readers may recall a post from a few months back that analyzed how publishers in the form of the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative were trying to claim that using Sci-Hub was a terrible security risk — rather as PIPCU is now doing, and employing much of the same groundless scare-mongering. It’s almost as if PIPCU, always happy to toe Big Copyright’s line, has uncritically taken a few talking points from the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative and repackaged in them in the current sensationalist press release. It would be great to know whether PIPCU and the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative have been talking about Sci-Hub recently. So I’ve submitted a Freedom of Information request to find out.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Filed Under: academic papers, academic publishers, city of london police, copyright, fud, pipcu, publishers, scholarly networks security initiative
Companies: sci-hub

City Of London Police Fail And Censor Their Way To A Lot More UK Taxpayer Money

from the censor-your-way-to-the-top dept

We’ve written plenty about the City of London Police and its Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which despite an official jurisdiction covering a square mile of London, has made it clear that it considers itself Hollywood’s private police force worldwide when it comes to stopping copyright infringement online. PIPCU has basically been a bumbling, censoring mess from the beginning. A year ago, it started ordering domain registrars to kill off websites with no court order and no legal basis — demands that actually violated ICANN’s policies. For registrars that ignored those baseless, bogus censorship demands, PIPCU started sending ridiculous threats claiming that they were engaged in criminal behavior. Of course, PIPCU’s understanding of both the internet and “criminal” laws is suspect. The head of the unit, Adrian Leppard, claims that “the Tor” is “90% of the internet” and “is a risk to society.” Another top officer, Andy Fyfe, somehow believes that if PIPCU isn’t running around censoring sites there would be anarchy online.

Of course, it’s not just crazy statements and bogus threats. PIPCU is actually causing real damage. It has built a secret pirate blacklist over which there is no transparency, no due process and no appeal. On some of those sites, it is injecting advertisements that are mockably ridiculous (though the injections are potentially illegal in their own right). Much more troubling is that PIPCU has been completely shutting down websites and privacy services with no legal basis at all. And, when they did actually arrest someone — claiming “industrial scale” infringement — the eventual details were so weak that the case was completely dropped in a matter of weeks.

Given the Keystone e-Cops nature of the City of London Police’s PIPCU, you’d think that, maybe, just maybe, it would be time to disband PIPCU and let the City of London Police get back to protecting London’s banks (its other main pasttime). Instead, the UK government has just given PIPCU a raise, dumping £3 million of UK taxpayer money into the group to continue its bumbling, censoring, technologically clueless ways. While I’m sure this makes some increasingly obsolete gatekeepers happy, it’s hard to see how this helps content creators or the public in any way at all.

Filed Under: censorship, city of london police, copyright, copyright cops, infringement, ipo, pipcu, uk

City Of London Police Drove 200 Miles To Arrest And Jail 'Industrial' Level Pirate… Only To Have Case Fall Apart And All Charges Dropped

from the oops,-sorry-'bout-that dept

We’ve certainly questioned the efforts by the City of London Police to set themselves up as the legacy entertainment industry’s private police force. Over the past year or so, the police operation (which, yes, represents just one square mile of London, but a square mile with lots of big important businesses), has demonstrated that it will be extremely aggressive, not in fighting criminal wrongdoing, but in protecting the private business interests of some legacy companies, often with little to no legal basis. It also appears that the City of London’s famed Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is not particularly technology savvy, and seems to just accept what big record labels, movie studios and the like tell it.

In the last few months, the City of London Police’s PIPCU effort has even gone on a bit of an arresting spree, under questionable circumstances. We noted in August that they had arrested the operator of an anti-censorship proxy service, almost entirely based on the say so of the entertainment industry. In September, PIPCU took a 200+ mile drive up the road to arrest Zain Parvez to great fanfare. PIPCU insisted that Parvez was running a series of streaming sites related to sporting events, and was infringing on the rights of the Premier League (notorious copyright maximalists). PIPCU claimed it was an “industrial scale” operation, and tossed Parvez in jail.

Fast forward a few weeks and… all charges against Parvez have been dropped. Apparently, once the case reached the Manchester Crown Court and the Crown Prosecution Services looked at it, they realized how weak a case there was, and simply dropped the whole thing. Given PIPCU’s previous statements and actions, this hardly seems surprising. PIPCU and the City of London Police appear to be the latest in an unfortunately long line of folks who think that copyright infringement is such a black-and-white/open-and-shut thing that you can just declare someone “guilty” based on some questionable assumptions and it’s obvious for everyone to understand why.

Perhaps, the UK’s Intellectual Property Office, rather than funding PIPCU to be the legacy industry’s personal police force, should have spent those resources actually training them to understand technology, due process and such.

Filed Under: arrest, charges, city of london police, copyright, dropped, pipcu, zain parvez

Head Of City of London Police Unit That Operates Without Court Orders Worries About Online 'Lawlessness'

from the know-thyself dept

A year ago, Techdirt wrote about a new unit set up by the City of London Police to tackle crimes involving intellectual monopolies. Since then, there have been a flood of posts about its increasingly disproportionate actions, including seizing domain names, shutting down websites, inserting ads on websites, and arresting someone for running an anti-censorship proxy. This makes a PCPro interview with the head of that unit, Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Andy Fyfe, particularly valuable, since it helps shed a little light on the unit’s mindset. It’s well-worth reading the whole thing, but here’s a key section:

> I’m very interested in having a debate in the media about how much policing of the internet people want. At the moment, there?s almost no regulation and no policing of the internet and that means members of the public — such as you and I — when we’re trying to use it for shopping or to do internet shopping, actually don?t have anyone looking out for our interests to make sure that the people we?re dealing with at the other end of the line are legitimate or reasonable or looking after our data properly. > > In the end, that might mean that the internet becomes completely ungovernable, and that no one can dare operate on it at all, no one can dare do their shopping or banking on it.

DCI Fyfe seems to be talking about a different Internet from the one most of us use, which is not just subject to regulations, but to multiple regulations because of the way overlapping jurisdictions are involved. Indeed, because of this, the Internet arguably has far more policing than the physical world. Moreover, in terms of “looking out for our interests,” the Internet is unique in that its users are able to do that for themselves using online rating systems, reviews left on websites and general comments on social networks. Word about dodgy online operators gets out incredibly quickly, so in this respect, we are probably far safer online than in the physical world where such mechanisms are rarely available.

However, it is true that there is a threat to online shopping and banking, but not the one DCI Fyfe is probably thinking about. Buying and selling goods, or transferring money online, is relatively safe thanks to strong encryption that is now routinely available for such operations. Or rather, it was relatively safe until spy agencies like the NSA and GCHQ decided to undermine the entire basis of these activities for their own purely selfish ends, and disregarding the collateral damage they would cause to general users of the Internet.

Despite the harm caused by such actions, DCI Fyfe thinks a time may come when the government will want to interfere even more:

> That time might come, but it’s how much interference the public will tolerate, because clearly a lot of people believe there should be no state interference at all on the internet, but that leads to lawlessness and anarchy.

The growing crusade of DCI Fyfe’s unit against online sites purely on the say-so of the copyright industry shows that he doesn’t really care what “a lot of people” think about state interference. And when it comes to “anarchy and lawlessness,” acting without court orders seems to fit that bill rather well.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: andy frye, city of london police, copyright, internet, ip, jurisdiction, lawlessness, pipcu

City Of London Police Issue Vague, Idiotic Warning To Registrars That They're Engaged In Criminal Behavior Because It Says So

from the say-what? dept

This was mentioned briefly in our recent post about EasyDNS changing how it deals with online pharmacies, but it’s still dealing with bizarre requests from the City of London Police. As we’ve been detailing, the City of London Police seem to think that (1) their job is to protect the business model of the legacy entertainment industry and (2) that they can do this globally, despite actually just representing one-square mile and (3) that they can do this entirely based on their own say so, rather than any actual court ruling. It started last year when the City of London Police started ordering registrars to transfer domains to the police based entirely on their say so, rather than any sort of due process/trial that found the sites guilty of violating a law. The police wanted the domains to point to sites that the legacy entertainment industry approved of, which makes you wonder why the police are working on behalf of one particular industry and acting as an ad campaign for them.

Speaking of advertising, the City of London Police’s more recent tactic is inserting ridiculous and misleading banner ads on websites based on a secret blacklist that has no oversight and no due process or way to appeal. Such lists often include perfectly legitimate sites. But, I’m sure we can trust the City of London Police to get this right, given that the guy in charge of the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), Adrian Leppard, believes that “the Tor” is 90% of the internet and that “Bitnet” is a “huge risk and threat to our society.”

The latest move, as detailed in a post by Mark Jeftovic from EasyDNS, is sending registrars like EasyDNS a “notice of criminality” that doesn’t directly tell the company to do anything, other than to think long and hard about who they do business with.

Classification: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED Dear Sir or Madam,

Notice of Criminality

[domain name redacted by easyDNS]

EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

Receipt of this email serves as notice that the aforementioned domain, managed by EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 28/03/2014 is being used to facilitate criminal activity, including offences under:

Fraud Act 2006 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 Serious Crime Act 2007

We respectfully request that EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. give consideration to your ongoing business relationship with the owners/purchasers of the domain to avoid any future accusations of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds.

Should you require any clarification please do not hesitate to make contact.

Kind regards,

PIPCU Anti-Piracy | Operations | Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit | PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk<PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk > | Address: City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate, 21 New Street, London, EC2M 4TP | ? www.cityoflondon.police.ukhttp://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/

As Jeftovic notes, the implication here is pretty clear. The City of London Police wants to “build a case” that EasyDNS is somehow responsible for aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Once again, we are being asked to do (something, we’re actually not sure what this time) based entirely on an allegation which has never been tested in a court of law and has been afforded absolutely zero “due process”. (The domain in question is a search engine that hosts no content).

[….]

We think this time the intent is not to actually get the domain name taken down, but rather to build some sort of “case” (I won’t call it legal, perhaps the better word would be “kafka-esque”) that we, easyDNS by mere “Receipt of this email” are now knowingly allowing domains under management to be “used to facilitate criminal activity”.

Thus, if we don’t takedown the domains PIPCU want us to, when they want us to, then we may face accusations in the future (in their own words) “of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds.”

Which of course, we don’t know at all because there has never even been a court case anywhere to test the PIPCU allegations. I know I never went to law school or anything, but in my mind, until that happens, that is all they are ? allegations.

And, of course, it’s tough to see how the City of London Police have any jurisdiction at all over EasyDNS, a Canadian company. Jeftovic goes on to wonder if the City of London Police are actually defaming the websites they accuse in these notices. Of course, the problem is that these sites tend to be small and powerless. As we’ve seen with sites like Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, even after they were taken down and businesses were destroyed for over a year before the Justice Department in the US simply dropped the cases and handed back the domain names, there was little those sites could do in response. Sure, they could have filed a lawsuit, but lawsuits are expensive, and a lawsuit for a tiny struggling website against the US government? That’s just not likely to get anywhere productive.

What’s extra troubling is how this tactic of targeting registrars for non-judicial censorship like this is becoming increasingly common — and it’s happening in countries like the US and the UK which claim to support basic principles of due process and are (supposedly) against prior restraint. When it comes to the City of London Police, they seem to be operating without any sort of controls or oversight, just making it up as they go along. Unfortunately, because they’re “the police,” it doesn’t seem likely that anyone will get them to cut out this censorious and harassing activity.

Filed Under: adrian leppard, city of london police, copyright, facilitation, jurisdiction, notice of criminality, pipcu, registrars
Companies: easydns

City Of London Police Turn Down Torrentfreak's FOIA Request Because It Would Take Too Long To Fulfill

from the too-hard,-won't-try dept

The City of London Police (notably, not the London Metropolitan Police and you will rue the day you ever make that mistake) have been both a law unto themselves and the UK’s foremost copyright cops… which would make them a copyright law unto themselves… or something. Name another law enforcement agency that has single-handedly done more to pursue the Pirate Bays of the world. I follow this sort of stuff pretty closely and no one else even comes close. Here’s a very brief rundown of the City of London’s efforts in the service of King Copyright.

– Ordered registrars to shut down websites (without a court order) and threatened to strip registrars’ accreditation if they didn’t comply

– Created a secret “pirate site blacklist” for advertisers

– Inserted banner ads on “pirate” websites stating the sites had been forwarded to the police for “review,” all without any legal basis to do so

– Arrested the creator of an anti-censorship proxy service, basically because Hollywood told it to

– Claimed Tor is “90% of the internet” and a “risk to society.” Also: “bitnet.”

Torrentfreak (which follows this sort of stuff extremely closely) sent a FOIA request to the City of London police seeking correspondence with “representatives of the creative industry regarding the pirate bay also known as TPB, thepiratebay.se, thepiratebay.sx, thepiratebay.org, or Pirate Bay.”

Forget all the nice things I said about the UK’s more relaxed attitude towards Freedom of Information requests. (Well, not all of them. This is a police force that serves the copyright industry, not the UK government itself.) The response to Torrentfreak basically says that it would require making an expenditure of time and as such, falls outside the expense guidelines for FOIA responses.

“In order to establish the existence of any correspondence of this kind it would be necessary to examine all mail systems, all call logs and all files/documents held by the force,” the reply read.

“The cost of completing this work would exceed the limit prescribed by the Secretary of State in accordance with powers contained in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. The limit is currently set at £450 and the hourly rate is set at £25.”

If so, then any request that might require 18 hours of work will automatically be tossed out. On one hand, this almost seems like an admission that the City of London Police communicate frequently with representatives of creative industries. On the other, it seems like an easy way to blow off a request for information it’s in no hurry to release.

This sends Torrentfreak back to the drawing board and raises serious questions about the City of London’s computer system. (Then again, the assertions about “bitnet” and “the internet is 90% Tor” raise a few technology-related questions of their own…) Any correspondence system utilized by governments should be searchable, including anything archived. It’s not as though this sort of technology is obscure and limited to entities with unlimited budgets. It’s fairly basic stuff. But the City of London police maintains it’s a job that would exceed the time budget and, therefore, Torrentfreak gets nothing.

Torrentfreak will be revising its requests in hopes of finding something that’s not too time-consuming for the City of London police to tackle. If and when these are released, I’m sure they’ll make for entertaining and enlightening reading, provided they aren’t redacted into complete uselessness.

Filed Under: city of london police, foia, uk
Companies: the pirate bay, torrentfreak

City Of London Police Arrest Creator Of Anti-Censorship Proxy Service Based On Hollywood's Say So

from the out-of-control dept

We’ve been covering the extreme and misinformed attempts by the City of London Police to become Hollywood’s personal police force online (despite only having jurisdiction for the one square mile known as the City of London). As we’ve noted, the City of London Police don’t seem to understand internet technology at all, nor do they have any jurisdiction to pull down websites. Yet, despite the total lack of a court order, many clueless registrars see letterhead from a police department and assume everything must be legit, even though this completely violates ICANN policy for domain registrars. Much of this is done in “partnership” with legacy players from the industry, who the police seem to listen to without any skepticism at all. It would be like the NYPD giving control of banking fraud investigations to Goldman Sachs.

As we were just pointing out, while the City of London Police seem to think it’s “obvious” what is and what is not a “pirate site”, oftentimes it’s not at all easy to figure that out. That was made clear last week when the organization helping the City of London Police reposted an entire BBC article about their cooperation (soon after our post went up, that company’s post disappeared quietly with no notice). And now, TorrentFreak is reporting the City of London Police have “seized” an open proxy service called Immunicity, that was set up as an anti-censorship tool. Not only that, but they’ve also arrested the operator. The site itself is engaged in no copyright infringement at all. But its entire website has been replaced thanks to a bogus claim by the City of London Police.

The police even seem to brag that they’re in the bag for the legacy entertainment companies:

According to Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe, the arrest is a prime example of a successful partnership between the copyright industry and local law enforcement.

?This week?s operation highlights how PIPCU, working in partnership with the creative and advertising industries is targeting every aspect of how copyrighting material is illegally being made available to internet users,? Fyfe says.

So, yes, it’s the police “partnering” with a legacy industry that has a long and demonstrated history of bogus attacks on new technologies that challenge its business model. And rather than actually view such claims with skepticism, the police lap it up and take down websites without anything even approaching a court order.

And to show just how confused they are, the main “industry” representative helping the police here basically admits to the belief that any proxy service must be illegal, because the industry doesn’t like it:

Commenting on the arrest, FACT Director Kieron Sharp argues that these proxy sites and services are just as illegal as the blocked sites themselves.

?Internet users have sought ways to continue to access the sites by getting round the blocking put in place by the ISPs. One of the ways to do this is to use proxy servers. This operation is a major step in tackling those providing such services,? Sharp notes.

Of course, based on that reasoning, the very same VPNs that many of us use to protect our internet surfing from surveillance would be equally considered “illegal.” Basically anything that challenges the business model of these legacy companies must be illegal and the City of London Police seem to think they can arrest those associated with them. Talk about going way overboard and creating massive chilling effects…

Filed Under: andy fyfe, city of london police, copyright, kieron sharp, proxy
Companies: fact

Organization Helping Police Inject Ads On 'Pirate' Sites 'Pirates' BBC Article About The Program

from the well-there-go-its-own-ads dept

Earlier this week we wrote about the latest ridiculous move by the City of London Police to inject ridiculous ads on sites that the City of London Police force deems to be “pirate sites.” As we noted in our writeup, it’s not always so easy to determine what is and what is not a “pirate” site. Here, let’s take a look at the website of a company called “Project Sunblock.” It’s a “brand safety” advertising company that claims to scan pages that ads appear on to make sure that good ads don’t appear on “bad pages.” It’s also the “partner” that the City of London Police are using to do their ad injection. Here’s what the original BBC article about this operation had to say about them:

Project Sunblock detects the content of websites to prevent brands’ ads appearing where they do not want them.

When a website on Pipcu’s Infringing Websites List (IWL) tries to display an advert, Project Sunblock will instead serve the police warning.

Neither the police or Project Sunblock are paying the website in question to display the police message.

So here’s the question: is Project Sunblock itself running a rogue site? Parker Higgins happened to notice that the company decided to copy the entire BBC article onto its blog. It seems to think it’s okay to do that, so long as it includes a “first published by Dave Lee on [BBC URL]” at the end. But, of course, that’s not true. The company appears to have just copied the entire article wholesale and put it on its own website. The BBC might claim that this is infringement. Assuming that, at some point, some genius at Project Sunblock may rethink this decision, here’s a thumbnail screenshot (you can click for a larger version):

Of course, this sort of thing — “ooh, nice PR article for us, let’s highlight it by posting it to our blog” — happens all the time. Because it seems totally natural and normal to most folks. Because it is. But it’s also likely to be copyright infringement, especially in the UK where they don’t have a pesky little thing called fair use.

But, really, it highlights the problem. The very company that is providing the tools to present bogus warnings to people that they’re on a site engaged in copyright infringement is, itself, likely engaged in copyright infringement. Because, these days, it’s almost impossible not to infringe someone’s copyright at some point or another. Figuring out what sites are “pirate” sites and what sites are “legit” isn’t so easy. When even the company the City of London Police signed up to do their ad injections can’t figure out how copyright works, shouldn’t the City of London Police think twice about unilaterally declaring sites pirate sites?

Filed Under: ads, articles, city of london police, copyright, infringement, rogue sites, uk
Companies: project sunblock

from the that-seems...-dangerous dept

The City of London police have continued to take their bull-in-a-china-shop approach to “stopping piracy” (generally based on a near total misunderstanding of the internet) to it’s next level of ridiculousness. The police (which, yes, no need to remind us, represent a square mile in the middle of wider London, though, yes, it covers many big London businesses and financial firms) appear to have bought into Hollywood’s fable about “piracy” being the equivalent of “theft” and not being even remotely concerned about the possibility of collateral damage. Back in April, we noted that the City of London Police had been creating a “blacklist” for advertisers of “bad” sites. And, now it’s been revealed that advertisers are supposed to insert a ridiculous City of London advertisement on those websites in place of other ads.

Like so many poorly thought out “anti-piracy” campaigns, this one seems to be based on two faulty premises. First, that it’s somehow easy to determine what is a legitimate site and what is a “pirate” site. Second, that the thing standing between someone using such a site to get their content and going to an authorized site is just a bit of “education.” The “education” story has been floating around for decades and there’s basically no evidence to support it whatsoever. The idea that someone is going to go to one of these sites, see this ad, and then think “oh man, I had no idea, let me go to this other site recommended by the police instead” is just laughable. Even the idea that they’d read “this website has been reported to the police” and not laugh is kind of ridiculous. Hell, just the idea that the sorts of folks frequenting these sites even look at banner ads is kind of laughable.

In fact, some of us are so conditioned to ad blindness that it actually took a bit of an effort to get me consciously focus on the City of London Police banner ads in that picture — and I didn’t even notice the top banner until I was proofreading this post. Can’t imagine that’s particularly productive.

But the bigger problem is the one we brought up when it first came out that they were putting together this list in the first place. A totally non-transparent, one-sided system by which these technologically clueless police designate a site to be a “pirate” site seems ripe for abuse and harming perfectly legitimate sites. Remember, of course, the last time the legacy entertainment and online ad industry teamed up on such a list? It included tons of legitimate sites, including the Internet Archive, Soundcloud, Vimeo and BitTorrent’s corporate website. It also included a bunch of popular hip hop blogs and 50 Cent’s personal website.

One hopes that this new list will be put together with a bit more care, but you never really know. The industry has a way of declaring certain sites “rogue” despite them being perfectly fine. Remember, this is the same industry that tried to outlaw the VCR, the DVR and the MP3 player. It’s also the same industry that insisted that both Youtube and Veoh were “pirate” sites, though both sites won in court (not before Veoh went out of business though).

So what happens when the City of London Police put these banner ads on the next YouTube? Does that site have any recourse from this opaque and totally one-sided process? Do they get to sue the police for defamation? And, really, in what world do the City of London Police think they have any jurisdiction outside of a single square mile of land?

Filed Under: advertising, anti-piracy, city of london police, copyright, education