Some of the biggest online advertising companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, have come to a “best practices” agreement with the United States’ government in order to fight piracy. These advertising companies essentially match up advertisers with people or websites looking to create advertising revenue through their website. Under this agreement with the US government, the advertising companies will prevent websites which infringe copyright from making this revenue. I do like that this anti-piracy measure, unlike most other measures, punishes the provider of pirated material rather than the user. However, I still have some reservations about its effectiveness.
First of all, the agreement between the US government and the companies is not legislation, its simply an agreement. Therefore there is nothing stopping another company, or groups of companies, from taking advantage of the influx of demand this will create. The company can even be potentially based outside of the United States, which will negate the corporate pressures they would face to adhere to this best practices agreement. Furthermore, there is nothing to stop a third party company from skipping the middleman and advertising directly with a website which has or promotes pirated material.
While this agreement on the surface seems like a big step towards fighting piracy, in reality I don’t think its anything more than a roadblock for the websites. For the corporations like Google, and Microsoft this probably has benefits in regards to public relations, but in reality I can not see this agreement doing more than being a short term inconvenience for those who sail the seas of piracy.
Source:
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/1731780/google-microsoft-yahoo-agree-to-white-house-plan-to
