Anti-Piracy Company Offers Advertising Deal to ‘Pirate’ Sites

Cutting off the money supply to copyright-infringing sites is commonly seen as a prime tactic to deal with the piracy problem. Anti-piracy company DMCAForce has a different strategy though. On behalf of a client, it's reaching out to file-sharing sites with an advertising deal, in exchange for a cut of the money.

In recent years copyright holders, with help from advertisers and other key players, have worked hard to cut off revenue streams to pirate sites.

The Trustworthy Accountability Group, an anti-piracy certification program operated by giants including Google, Facebook, Disney, and Warner, has been very active on this front, for example.

The basic idea behind this “follow the money” approach is that once the revenue sources of pirate sites dry up, their operators will eventually throw in the towel. While that may work on paper, DMCAForce appears to take the direct opposite approach.

The anti-piracy outfit, which works with a wide variety of clients including Dreamroom Productions, Liberty Media, and Udemy, is actively seeking cooperation with pirate sites.

Over the past several years, the company has regularly asked torrent sites, hosting platforms, and streaming services to remove content, and still does. But, in an email to the prominent torrent site LimeTorrents, DMCAForce also included a “revenue sharing” opportunity.

“DMCAForce recently launched a new way for File Sharing sites to work with content creators. Where you as the file sharing site can distribute their content for free, but in exchange provide the advertising space around the product,” the email reads.

“In the case of direct products, we can provide you affiliate tracking links, where instead of REMOVING the content, you can KEEP the content up, and we direct that user together back to the product on a commission basis,” the company adds.

The anti-piracy outfit explains that it has already made deals in the adult space. This worked well, with one of the producers currently generating $15,000 in advertising revenue per month from a single site.

“This has encouraged content creators to keep their content up and build a better relationship,” DMCAForce notes.

The operator of LimeTorrents, who’s not interested in the deal, was asked to reply within three days to find out how it can monetize the content. If not, the anti-piracy outfit said it would proceed with a regular DMCA takedown notice.

The revenue sharing program is fairly new. In addition to reaching out to file-sharing sites, DMCAForce also invites its clients to join the program.

“If you have a product you are selling, and want to ask these pirate sites to put advertising around your stolen content or replace the stolen content with linkbacks, we offer that as well,” DMCAForce informed its clients recently.

It’s quite unique for an anti-piracy company to offer a monetization option to what it sees as pirate sites. We, therefore, would love to find out more about the details of the program. Unfortunately, however, DMCAForce did not immediately reply to our request for comment.

Source: TorrentFreak