Piracy Crime Unit PIPCU secures funding until 2017

The City of London's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a government funded organisation dedicated to clamping down on intellectual property and copyright infringements, most notably online piracy. It's been in operation for a few years now and clearly the government is pleased with its progress, as it's now been granted enough funding to see it through 2017 – despite evidence suggesting that its efforts actually hurt media sales.

The increased funding was announced yesterday by Lucy Neville-Rolfe, current minister for intellectual property. It will see the organisation get £3 million to work with over the next few years. This represents a near half million increase in funding awarded to PIPCU for the 2013-2015 period.

“We’ve seen significant success in PIPCU’s first year of operation,” said Neville-Rolfe in her address, referencing site closures and ISP block orders instigated by PIPCU. “This extra support will help the unit to build on this impressive record in the fight against intellectual property crime, which costs the UK at least £1.3 billion a year in lost profits and taxes,” Baroness Neville-Rolfe said.”

Understandably, other anti-piracy and copyright lobby groups like the BPI were pleased with the news too. Director of copyright protection at the organisation, David Wood said:

“The work of PIPCU to date has been invaluable in tackling piracy, which is recognized as a significant threat to musicians’ income, investment in new businesses and the growth of the UK’s creative economy.”

He has a point too. Out of all of the groups working to crack down on copyright infringement online, PIPCU has been perhaps the most effective in implementing its anti-piracy efforts. However, that seems at least partially to do with the fact that it's an arm of the London Police forces, lending a little more weight to its demands for takedowns or block orders, than a studio backed lobby group.

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KitGuru Says: While KitGuru would never encourage piracy, we still think the best way to tackle it is to provide legal services that offer the same selection, availability and ease of access as pirate sites at an affordable price. I guarentee most pirates would use that instead of going the illegal route, if the option was there. [Thanks TorrentFreak]

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