Global anti-piracy strategy revealed in leaked report

A secretive report written by the IFPI – that purports to represent the music industry worldwide – has been inadvertently made available online. In it, the group and its leader detail plans to deal with piracy and major recording labels around the world.

The 30 page document is dated for April 2012, suggesting that it's relatively recent. Acquired by TorrentFreak, the report suggests five possible ways for dealing with a piracy problem: take down, disruption, investigation, lobbying and litigation.

Splitting pirated content into two categories, the kind held on private computers that's shared via P2P networking, and the kind held on central servers like file locker websites, the document has examples of some of the worst offenders in each respect. Interestingly however, when analysing cloud stroage sites like Fileserve, Rapidshare and others, MegaUpload – the site that was taken down and its owner arrested – was one of the lowest on the scale, with FileSonic being the worst offender.

The IFPI believes the best way to deal with these sites is to force a content filter on them. However if that isn't sufficient or not complied with, and copyright protected content still ends up on the site, a take down request system must be implemented. If that is ignored or not enough, the organisation recommends legal action to force the site to close completely.

But what about ISPs? Block orders are a common phrase in the media at the moment with The Pirate Bay being ineffectively blocked in many countries. The IFPI believes that these are effective however, citing them as a great measure for restricting site access – despite the many reports contrary to this.

The report ends by saying that organisations need to work together and that “co-operation, partnerships and information exchange” were some of the most important things to consider when dealing with copyright infringement.

KitGuru Says: What's weird about the close of this report is the importance of “information exchange” is often the argument given by pirates for why they do what they do. Perhaps file sharers and the IFPI have more in common than they think?

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