Google is looking into a new strategy for cracking down on piracy sites. It involves cutting off the sources of their funding so they wither and die.
The UK Telegraph says Google is in cahoots with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to stop supplying money to websites that host links to illegally obtained books, movies and TV shows. This plan would also stop feeding cash to sites that don’t respond to legal requests because they’re offshore or out of the country.
It would be the first time Google has taken such a drastic step to cut down on piracy, but not the first for financial companies. PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, among others, stopped donations to WikiLeaks in 2011 to cease donations to the document-dropping site. Although WikiLeaks hasn’t gone away entirely, that move seems to have severely hampered its operation, which seems to be exactly what Google would like to do for pirate sites. [Telegraph]