UK Premium Rate Service Regulator Joins Fight Against Piracy

PhonepayPlus, the organization that regulates premium rate services (PRS) in the United Kingdom, signed an agreement with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the City of London Police as a measure to combat online piracy.

“PhonepayPlus is making a welcome proactive commitment to help us tackle digital piracy. Pirate websites hoping to use phone payment services as a replacement for the credit card facilities withdrawn from their sites will find they are unable to do so,” revealed Frances Moore, chief executive of IFPI.

“These illegal business that rip-off artists, songwriters and record producers are finding it ever harder to continue to ply their lucrative trade.”

From now on, all the phone paid operators will be notified by PhonepayPlus on websites that commercialize bootlegged products so they'll know to avoid them in case they are approached in demand for their services.

IFPI anti-piracy investigators will hand over evidence of copyright infringement acts to the Police and once the authorities confirm the findings, the PRS company will be notified.

PhonepayPlus joins MasterCard, Visa and PayPal who are already working with the Police and IFPI to make sure their payment services are not used by shady markets.

“As a proactive regulator, we are pleased to be working with the IFPI to ensure that we stop before it starts copyright infringement using the PRS payment mechanism,” Paul Whiteing, chief executive of PhonepayPlus said.

“Although we have not seen problems in the UK PRS market where copyright infringement is concerned, we want to pre-empt such problems before they start. We are working with PRS providers and the trade bodies who represent them to make sure a clear message goes out – there is no place in the UK PRS market for illegal content that infringes copyright.”

Other countries should follow their example as this really sounds a good way to stop the worst side of the piracy phenomenon.