On 23 March 2015, the representatives of the French advertising industry signed a charter of good practices to fight piracy. This charter is an initiative of the French minister of culture and communications.
My highlights of the three page long charter:
1- the signing companies establish and implement clear and transparent recommendations to prevent pirate sites to deal with them.
2- these recommendations will be published and widely disseminated
3- The signatories implement the means at their disposal, each according to its role to prevent of advertisements on pirate sites. Each signatory may use its own blacklist and own mitigation techniques.
4- A Committee will monitor and publish the results.
Most of the revenues of pirate sites are coming from advertisement. Unfortunately, legitimate businesses sometimes advertise on these pirate sites. With the current automatic auctioning systems, often these brands are even not aware where they advertise. This practice has three consequences:
- It provides revenue to pirate sites
- It gives some feeling of legitimacy to these sites as famous brands advertise there. People may be less suspicious on the legality of a site advertising known brands than the same site advertising Russian brides.
- It tarnishes the reputation of the advertising brand.
The text of the charter is available here. Of course, it is in French.