UK Gov’s anti-piracy campaign has sent out 1m emails asking users not to pirate

Information about the anti-piracy campaign “Get It Right from a Genuine Site” has come to light, revealing that UK internet service providers (ISPs) have sent out around 1m emails to users over the last two years that have allegedly used their internet access to access pirate content.

The campaign kicked off five years ago, in a collaboration between rights holders, the UK government and ISPs. The emails sent over the last two years are a sort of ‘call in’, letting the alleged copyright infringers know about some other legal options.

Largely, things have been quiet since the announcement that emails were going out, but Torrent Freak picked up on an appearance by the director of public affairs at music outfit BPI, Ian Moss, who spoke at an anti-piracy conference in France and outlined how effective this email campaign has been.

Related: Best Horror Games

Those getting the emails are sent to an information hub where they can read up on piracy, how to avoid piracy, and what they could do to stop receiving the alerts.

It’s a huge campaign, as you might imagine for something sending out half a million emails each year, but it does seem to be having an effect: while Moss is keen to stress these are early findings and come with caveats, those receiving the emails are less likely to pirate than people who do not receive the emails.

There was, in general, a 26 percent reduction in piracy between those the public and a control group of people who were not exposed to the Get It Right campaign.

Related: Samsung Galaxy S10

The first caveat is that the data is somewhat inaccurate, starting in 2015 with the birth of the campaign instead of in 2017 when the emails started being sent. Secondly, this data isn’t yet ready for official publication, which means there’s probably still a little more fact-checking going on.

This campaign has just hoovered up another £2m in government funding, and is expected to keep running until 2021. However, while they may be effective at targeting piracy through torrenting, the biggest piracy threats are now to do with specially made piracy boxes, streaming piracy and other new methods of acquiring copyrighted material.

The full information on how effective the campaign has been should be revealed soon, in the meantime you can consider the 1m emails sent out to people around the country, asking them not to pirate.

Recieving one of these anti-piracy notices? Did it encourage you to change your ways? Let us know on Twitter, we’re on @TrustedReviews