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PIPCU sends out new ‘stop it now’ letters to the pirates
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 23 January 2017
As well as dropping by the offices of a bunch of brands and advertising companies whose ads continue to appear on piracy websites, the City Of London’s IP Crime Unit has also got busy since the start of the year sending out a bunch of new letters to the operators of several copyright infringing websites urging said site owners to shut down or go legit, otherwise they could face criminal action.
According to Torrentfreak, compared to previous warning letters sent out by the specialist IP policing unit, aka PIPCU, the new correspondence name-checks more UK laws that the copyright infringing sites may be breaching, and the more extreme sanctions that come with those laws.
After listing possible offences stemming from fraud, copyright and serious crime legislation, the letter says: “Should a conviction be brought for the above offences, UK courts may impose sentences of imprisonment and/or fines”, adding that “PIPCU has criminal and civil powers in UK law to seize money, belongings and any property in connection with these offences”.
However, the music-focused piracy site that passed its PIPCU letter over to Torrentfreak – DailyNewJams or DNJ.to – was rather blasé about the missive. Operators of that site told Torrentfreak: “They accuse us of breaking the UK law but we have no relation to the UK nor do any of us live there”.
They then claimed: “We don’t even try to actively drive UK traffic to the blog. In fact we completely don’t care about the UK”.
Though that’s obviously a bluff, because I have it on good authority – from Theresa May herself, no less – that trading with Britain is everyone’s top priority throughout the entire world, and once we untangle ourselves from all that EU nonsense the world’s music pirates will be lining up to infringe copyright in our newly empowered United Kingdom.
