The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is a unit of the

City of London Police The City of London Police is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement within the City of London, including the Middle and Inner Temples. The force responsible for law enforcement within the remainder of the London region, o ...

, the national lead force for

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compen ...

. It was established in 2013 with the responsibility to investigate and deter serious and organised

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

crime in the

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. It is based in City of London Police’s headquarters at Guildhall Yard East. The unit consists of 19 police officers and staff, including

detectives A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads th ...

and police staff investigators. Part of PIPCU’s remit is to protect consumers from harm, focusing on intellectual property crime that has public safety implications. Since its inception, it has investigated intellectual property crime worth more than £100 million concerning counterfeit goods or digital piracy, and suspended 28,000 websites selling counterfeit goods. These websites have also been linked to

identity theft Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term ''identity theft'' was c ...

History

The operationally-independent unit was launched in September 2013 with funding from the UK government's Intellectual Property Office. It was announced in August 2017 that PIPCU will receive a further £3.2 million from the IPO to fund the unit to June 2019. In 2013, the unit began Operation Creative to disrupt and prevent websites from providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content in partnership with the creative and advertising industries. Rights holders in the creative industries can report copyright infringing websites to PIPCU, providing a detailed package of evidence indicating how the site is involved in illegal copyright infringement. Research has shown that there has been a 64% decrease in advertising from the UK’s top advertising spending companies on copyright infringing websites and an 87% drop in adverts for licensed gambling operators being displayed on illegal sites that infringe copyright. In 2013, Operation Ashiko was created to targets the sale of online physical counterfeit goods and aims to seize the domains of infringers. In April 2017, PIPCU launched the IP Crime Directory, a database for

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and police officers to help them identify counterfeit goods with the information uploaded by rights and brand holders.

Operation Creative

Operation Creative, formerly Operation Trade Bridge, is an ongoing campaign against alleged copyright infringing sites and their advertising network. A number of torrent and streaming sites have been either shut down, had their domains seized or threatened by the PIPCU. Whilst over 100 websites have been 'dealt with', the majority of domain name suspension requests are denied.

Operations

In December 2015 they arrested a

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...

subtitle creation gang. By August 2015, 317 domain suspension requests had been issued. In March 2021 they claimed the Sci-Hub website could "pose a threat" to university students' personal data. In April 2022, they seized the website of Club Penguin Rewritten, a fan recreation of the Disney online game,

Club Penguin ''Club Penguin'' was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), involving a virtual world that contained a range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players used cartoon ...

Immunicity arrest

In response to the new round of web blocking in the UK in conjunction with the copyright infringing site blocking programmes, a service called Immunicity was launched. to allow circumvention of both blocking types. However on 6 August 2014 the owner was arrested by the PIPCU under anti-fraud legislation. Anti-censorship supporters created clones of the site such as Immun.es (which closed down shortly after launching) and routingpacketsisnotacrime.uk to resurrect the service. By August 2015 the immunicity domain was back under the control of anti-censorship activists and displays a website inviting people to use Tor and other anonymity services.

Infringing website list

PIPCU maintains an 'Infringing Website List' (IWL), a portal for digital advertisers to be informed of sites containing infringing content with the intention that they cease advertising on them. Sites are identified as infringing by rights holders and the list is not made available to the public. As of 12 August a freedom of information request from

TorrentFreak __NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...

revealed: 74 domains are subject to the advertiser blocking programme, of which of October 2014 only 2 domains had ever been removed from the list. 83 advertising companies with a UK presence are currently participating. Working with the media and advertiser industry body, the

Audit Bureau of Circulations An Audit Bureau of Circulations is a private organization that provides industry-agreed standards for media brand measurement of print publications and other media outlets in a given country. The International Federation of Audit Bureaux of Circula ...

(ABC) created a technology portal called 'Project Sunblock'. If PIPCU do not receive a response from the website operators, the host or registrar of an allegedly infringing site, the site is added to the IWL via the Sunblock portal, which is then passed along to participating advertising networks for blacklisting. From June 2014 this technology allowed replacing the adverts of websites believed to be offering unauthorized content with warnings from PIPCU. In 2014 the PIPCU removed payment provisions from 4,650 offending sites with a

.co.uk .uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us. , it is the fift ...

address from sites on the infringing websites list.Hansard
2015-01-28

References

External links

* {{UK policing units 2013 establishments in the United Kingdom Government agencies established in 2013 Intellectual property organizations National law enforcement agencies of the United Kingdom category:City of London Police