The British Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has started to replace advertising on copyright-infringing websites with official warnings telling users that the site is under criminal investigation. The sites in question are those that have been identified as hosting copyright-infringing content and reported to PIPCU by rights holders. Officers from the unit evaluate the sites to verify that they are infringing copyright. They then contact the site owner to give them the opportunity to “correct their behavior” and operate legitimately. If that fails, PIPCU can get the site taken down by contacting the domain registrar, replacing the site’s ads with the scary warnings, or adding the sites to the infringing website list. When a site is added to that list, the information is fed back to a group of 60 marketing agencies, advertising technology companies, and brands responsible for placing ads, and they are then asked to stop placing ads on those sites.
