Google and GoDaddy join anti-piracy initiative led by the US advertising industry

Web giant Google and GoDaddy (the publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company) have both signed up to a new initiative led by the US advertising industry: the aim is to stop (or at least try) piracy websites from benefiting from ad income.

The whole project is based on the so called "follow the money" approach to target online piracy, trying to cut off the income of piracy set-ups. The organisation says its priorities are:

eliminating fraudulent digital advertising traffic, combating malware, fighting ad-supported internet piracy to promote brand integrity, and promoting brand safety through greater transparency.

Google and GoDaddy have both signed TAG’s "anti-piracy pledge", so they are committing to “take commercially reasonable steps to minimise the inadvertent placement of digital advertising on websites or other media properties that have an undesired risk of being associated with the unauthorised dissemination of materials protected by the copyright laws”. But at least for now - as TAG confirmed to Torrentfreak - Google’s commitment is as an advertiser itself, rather than as the operator of an ad-network that distributes other people’s advertising to third party sites. Commitments from the Google ad-network are arguably more significant, though TAG says that it is working to achieve that too.