Authorities and content copyright holders have been attempting to shut down illegal torrent and video sites for years in what seems like a never ending battle. And now a task force in the UK has come up with an interesting way to combat the owners of these sites by compromising their ad income streams.
The Intellectual Property Crime Unit (IPCU) of the City of London Police are planning to conduct an operation that will see its own ads on these sites in place of the usual NSFW stuff that is usually there. This of course would divert income from the service owners, in an attempt to forcefully shut the service down via its funding. The ads displayed by law enforcement will urge users to look elsewhere for media content among other things, according to reports.
Once illegal sites have been spotted by copyright holders, law enforcement then contact the infringing services and force them to either convert to a legitimate site or deal with criminal charges. If the warning doesn't work, sites will not only be put on the official blacklist, but authorities will attempt to force the domain registrar to suspend the service.
While not likely to make avid torrent site users think twice about downloading or viewing content illegally, it sounds as though it may be a much more effective tactic than what we have seen previously. It certainly won't stop torrent site owners from simply bouncing the services around to different places on the internet, but the police have enlisted the help of a company called Project Sunblock to help stay on top of its ad hijacking. Project Sunblock, who spends much of its time keeping ads from major brands away from the dark corners of the net, is seemingly reversing its talents to inject IPCU content into infringing sites.
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