UK’s Piracy Police Chief calls for new code of conduct
The Chief of the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) believes a debate on tighter laws is needed to fight digital piracy.
In an interview with PC Pro, PIPCU Chief Andy Fyfe said: “There may well come a time when government decides it’s had enough and it’s not getting enough help from those main companies that control the way we use the internet – they’re not getting enough help from them, so they’re going to start imposing regulations, imposing a code of conduct about the way people may be allowed to operated on the internet.”
The 21-strong PIPCU was established in December 2012 and made operational last September. With the UK currently using a range of strategies to curb online piracy – like its Operation Creative initiative, where ads on suspected pirate sites are replaced with police banners – the territory has one of the most active anti-piracy operations efforts in the world.
Fyfe believes the Internet may lose all order to the point where users won’t be using their credit cards to shop online. “So should there be a certain level at least of – you could say – state inference, in the interest of protecting consumers? I’m very keen to raise that as a debate,” Fyfe said.
Locally, Australian businesses were recently asked to weigh in on the government’s Online Copyright Discussion Paper, where it made reference to examples of ‘industry schemes’ which it hopes rightsholders and ISPs can agree to in a bid to stem file-sharing/illegal streaming. Last month, Music Rights Australia released a response showing support for the US’ ‘six-step’ approach, or ‘Copyright Alert System’.
“Notably, CCI (Centre for Copyright Information) has reported that 57% of users surveyed stated that they would stop engaging in copyright infringement immediately upon receiving an alert,” MRA said in its response.
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