Funding PIPCU

During a meeting on September 5th 2014 with Mike Weatherley (the Prime Minister’s IP Adviser) Sony noted that they and the MPAA were not pleased at the idea of being asked to fund PIPCU;

The potential (now likely) request for Rights Holders to contribute funds to support PIPCU will be limited to whatever the DCMS Minister (Sajid Javid) considers to be outside the definition of “policing”. So, for example, on-site assistance with review of evidence sent for the Advertising initiative, assistance with funding for training etc.

MPAA’s representative made clear that we are not pleased with the prospect of any contribution – and, at a subsequent meeting of the Alliance, it was confirmed that many other entities/groups endorse and will deliver the same view.

Following the news that the Government was going to fund PIPCU till Sony noted on October 23rd 2014 that

Note that the local UK/EU member company and MPA team have agreed already that we need to focus immediately on ensuring that Government funding continues beyond (assuming that PIPCU continues to be helpful) and also monitoring whatever spending review happens during and immediately after the 2015 election so that we don’t lose the current commitment.

That Sony considers that PIPCU may at some point no longer be helpful is interesting but such an assumption is a touch rude considering that in April 2014 Sony discovered that their ads were displaying on “rogue” sites thanks to a PIPCU seized site;

Despite these efforts and successes, there are still regular instances of Sony ads being placed on illegal sites, including an SEL ad (discovered during a domain seizure operation by the City of London Police) and two Playstation ads (discovered during web crawling initiatives by music trade associations RIAA and IFPI). Screen shots depicting these particular examples are attached here for your reference. We are aware of instances of poorly placed ads for SME’s music and SPE’s films as well. All of our companies have vulnerability in this area, and we’d like to work more closely together to ensure that Sony’s brand is supported by responsible ad practices across all of our companies.

Conspiring with (and against) Government Ministers

Elsewhere in the leaks one can see that Sony are cozy with Government Ministers at varying levels whom they’ll happily attempt to get fired;

… am sitting here with Bella and conspiring as to how to make you Minister of Culture and Sport. You are perfectly qualified. First step is to get ed Vaizey fired. I will do this with George Osborne. I will do this with George Osborne. Next step is to get you appointed. This requires you meeting CHARLES Dunstone and having him recommend you

It’s interesting to note that Charles Dunstone is the Chairman of TalkTalk Group who were the first ISP to deploy Huawei filtering hardware devices in their network and were one of the ISPs rumoured to be pushing for Default Filtering…