BPI Launches Online Copyright Protection Portal To Help Labels And Musicians

The music organisation, BPI, has launched its Copyright Protection Portal to help labels, musicians and music businesses see where illegal copies of their music are being made available illegally online and track how BPI is responding.

BPI is the leading organisation in the world removing illegal content from search engines and lockers. This new innovative tool is the latest step in BPI’s copyright protection strategy and will be available free of charge to all BPI members, PPL’s performers and members of AIM (The Association of Independent Music) who are registered with PPL.

The secure Portal will allow users to upload their repertoire into BPI’s bespoke crawlers and to view the pirate activity that has been prevented or disrupted.

In particular, it will show how many infringing links have been removed from Google and other search results, how many links have been removed via notice and takedown from the source or website hosting them without permission, and which tracks from a label or musician’s repertoire are being pirated the most and on which sites.

Commenting at the launch of the Copyright Protection Portal at Midem, BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor said, “BPI is absolutely committed to protecting the creativity, hard work and investment of UK musicians and labels. We are the leading force removing illegal copies of British music online and preventing illegal sites from targeting UK fans. This new portal will allow musicians and labels to see how our team is protecting their music on a daily basis. It will help us work together directly with more individual labels and performers and build further on the progress we are making in reducing music piracy levels in the UK.”

Calling on the industry to engage with the tool, Dave Wood, Director of Copyright Protection at the BPI, added “The BPI’s Copyright Protection Unit is always exploring new ways to ensure music is enjoyed legitimately online. 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. The daily updating of this 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. We’re extending an invitation to anyone who is interested to visit us at Midem or back in London to find out more.”

The tool will further strengthen the work of the BPI’s Unit which has been in the driving seat of a number of major copyright protection initiatives in recent years. BPI has brought world-leading High Court blocking actions on behalf of the industry, restricting access in the UK to over 60 of the biggest music infringing websites and hundreds of related proxy and proxy aggregator sites. This is more than any other rightsholder group in the UK and has resulted in a 75% reduction in UK use of the blocked sites.

Furthermore, the organisation has partnered with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) to create a world-recognised programme to disrupt pirate websites by throttling their advertising incomes, disrupting their payment provider facilities and removing their hosting facilities and domain names. Major brand advertising has since all but disappeared on the targeted sites. With regards to cleaning up search results, BPI has now removed nearly 145 million illegal links to music from Google’s search engine, more than any other organisation in the world.

In a bid to tackle physical piracy and counterfeits, BPI carried out 465 physical investigations in 2014 (the equivalent of more than one every day), resulting in seizures of more than 13 million tracks.

Source: BPI