PRS for Music, the UK music licensing group, is marking the first year of its Member Anti-Piracy System. The program is designed to help manage unlicensed use of members’ repertoire in online services. MAPS has located 5 million infringing URLs and removed more than 80% of reported links. It has also send more than 136,000 take-down notices to websites and has helped completely shutter 220 illegal website.
“As a licensing body, our first approach is always to take steps to work with new digital platforms, to find a mechanism to license rather than enforce,” said Simon Bourn, PRS for Music’s head of litigation, enforcement and anti-piracy. “As the digital landscape evolves, it is our mission to ensure that those who mandate us with their rights are always paid fairly for the use of their work, today and in the future.”