U.K. labels trade body BPI has launched a dedicated “Copyright Protection Portal” that enables rights holders and artists to track and report illegal copies of their music.
The tool is the latest step in BPI’s copyright protection strategy and is available free of charge to all BPI members and PPL registered performers. Users are required to upload their repertoire into BPI’s bespoke crawlers, which will, in turn, provide analysis on which material is being pirated and where, as well as detail copyright infringing links that have been removed from search engines via notice and takedown. The platform also enables rights holders to report new instances of piracy not already detected by BPI.
“BPI is absolutely committed to protecting the creativity, hard work and investment of U.K. musicians and labels. This new portal will allow musicians and labels to see how our team is protecting their music on a daily basis,” said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor at the scheme’s launch at Midem, June 6.
“In such a fast-moving digital sector, we have to be ahead of those who feel it is justified to illegally distribute music and make money off other people’s creativity,” added Dave Wood, BPI director of copyright protection.
Wood went on to say that the daily updating of the portal “will be critical in helping us to protect more music repertoire than ever before and we hope that the industry will work with us to ensure it does the job it has been set up to do.”
BPI’s promotion of a dedicated “Copyright Protection Portal” follows a number of recent high-profile anti-piracy initiatives. Last fall, the organization successfully brought about a private prosecution against two individuals behind now-defunct copyright infringing music forum Dancing Jesus. Following the court case, both men were sentenced to a combined total of 53 months in prison.
BPI has also partnered with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) to create a bespoke program designed to disrupt pirate websites by throttling their advertising incomes and payment provider facilities. The trade body additionally claims to have removed nearly 145 million illegal links to music from Google — more than any other organization in the world — and carried out 465 physical investigations in 2014, resulting in seizures of more than 13 million tracks.
