In recent years piracy has moved from downloading to streaming on a long list of websites. Piracy has also moved to social media and other non-traditional websites.
Now the US federal government aims to take on this new age of piracy with a new plan published this week.
“The Plan—which incorporates views from a variety of individual stakeholders across government, industry, educational institutions, trade organizations and public interest groups—offers a blueprint for the work to be carried out over the next three years by the Federal Government in support of a healthy and robust intellectual property enforcement policy environment,” a White House statement reads.
Here is how the government plans to shut down streaming piracy.
Stopping the Money
Most sites that are offering pirated content do so to make money. Now the federal government wants to block the pirates’ ability to make money.
“An effective enforcement strategy against commercial-scale piracy and counterfeiting therefore, must target and dry up the illicit revenue flow of the actors engaged in commercial piracy online. That requires an examination of the revenue sources for commercial-scale pirates,” the report says.
“The operators of direct illicit download and streaming sites enjoy revenue through membership subscriptions serviced by way of credit card and similar payment-based transactions, as is the case with the sale and purchase of counterfeit goods, while the operators of torrent sites may rely more heavily on advertising revenue as the primary source of income.”
So how will the government stop the money? First it plans to target payment processors. Next it plans to go after advertising on different sites.
Social Media
Social media has grown into a space to share files, offering support for piracy. Now even social media is becoming the target of government efforts to stop piracy.
“[The government will] encourage the development of industry standards and best
practices, through a multistakeholder process, to curb abuses of social media channels for illicit purposes, while protecting the rights of users to use those channels for non-infringing and other lawful activities,” it notes.
“One underutilized resource may be the users themselves, who may be in a position to report suspicious product offerings or other illicit activity, if provided a streamlined opportunity to do so, as some social media companies are beginning to explore.”
Conclusion
It seems the US federal government is making a serious push to take on pirate streaming sites. Although this is no easy task to accomplish it is not that different from taking on torrent sites.
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