In order not to shut down next year, the Intellectual Property Unit wants new funds

Apr 14, 2014 15:17 GMT  ·  By

The City of London Police have been working hard against online piracy. The Intellectual Property Unit, in particular, has been quite active lately and is now looking to get permanent funding.

The demand comes from the Prime Minister’s Intellectual Property Advisor who has asked the government leader to provide permanent funding for the unit to expand its existence beyond 2015.

The creation of this particular unit came last summer, when the City of London Police started their campaign to defend copyright owners. Although it was only recently instated, it has already managed to aid the shutdown of several domains. In fact, just last week it forced the shutdown of several sports stream sites.

Basically, as Torrent Freak points out, the anti-piracy battles of groups such as the BPI and FACT are soon going to be financed by the UK taxpayers, something that may not exactly sit right with all citizens.

The unit is currently funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Intellectual Property Office. For two years, the Intellectual Property Unit was funded with £2.56 million (€3.1 million / $4.3 million). The temporary funds will expire in 2015 if the government doesn’t agree to allocate more money.

“I appreciate that funding for this new unit is not permanent. However, I would like to put on record my support for committing future funding to fighting IP crime and boosting the current level of financial support that is available for PIPCU. As I am sure that you are aware, the creative industries add over £70 billion (€84.7 billion / $117 billion) to our economy each year and so it really is in our national interest to protect that revenue,” wrote Parliament member Mike Weatherley in a letter sent to David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May.

Not only are they trying to bury as many sites as possible, or at the very least to make them inaccessible to British users, they’re also trying to cut off ad revenue to pirate sites, which would have a dramatic effect if it could be done.

“If we stop advertisers from shoveling money into illegal sites, we can stop a lot of the content. Possibly as much as 95 per cent according to the newly formed national Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU),” Weatherley estimates.

It remains to be seen whether David Cameron will agree to this or not, but considering some of his latest statements on the topic, his response may be in favor of funding the PIPCU.