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Controversial Dutch anti-piracy agency, BREIN, has spoken about the need for financial service providers, such as PayPal, to help in the fight against online piracy.
Already working with Dutch payment providers, BREIN says that payment providers should stop providing services to websites that BREIN deems to be unacceptable, "since those sites are unlawful unlawful", despite no legal ruling to actually classify these websites as one way or another.
Even more controversially, BREIN wants companies like PayPal to help identify the owners of websites by disclosing private agreements and financial data. BREIN has often met with difficulty identifying the people behind websites alleged to be offering pirated content, which surely must be one of the prerequisites to determine the "unlawful" nature of websites, as website operators often give false identity information to hosting providers. "We suspect that the payment providers have a good track, because the money they send has to go somewhere," BREIN chief Tim Kuik told Tweakers.net.
PayPal has already signalled its willingness to offer a helping hand in the fight against piracy, with an earlier agreement in July to help the IFPI crack down on websites offering pirated songs. PayPal also controversially cut off funding for Wikileaks, which promoted a recent call by hacking group LulzSec to boycott the company.
Already working with Dutch payment providers, BREIN says that payment providers should stop providing services to websites that BREIN deems to be unacceptable, "since those sites are unlawful unlawful", despite no legal ruling to actually classify these websites as one way or another.
Even more controversially, BREIN wants companies like PayPal to help identify the owners of websites by disclosing private agreements and financial data. BREIN has often met with difficulty identifying the people behind websites alleged to be offering pirated content, which surely must be one of the prerequisites to determine the "unlawful" nature of websites, as website operators often give false identity information to hosting providers. "We suspect that the payment providers have a good track, because the money they send has to go somewhere," BREIN chief Tim Kuik told Tweakers.net.
PayPal has already signalled its willingness to offer a helping hand in the fight against piracy, with an earlier agreement in July to help the IFPI crack down on websites offering pirated songs. PayPal also controversially cut off funding for Wikileaks, which promoted a recent call by hacking group LulzSec to boycott the company.