MUSO, the online anti-piracy system for music, film, publishing and software industries, has launched a new anti-piracy browser plug-in to assist web users in their fight against online piracy.
MUSO aims to help industries remove illegal copies of their work quickly and effectively from the internet. The system operates 24/7 and automatically scans and analyses billions of web pages for illegal copies of content.
The plug-in, which will be free to download from MUSO.com, will link to the user’s web browser, sending links back to the MUSO database when it comes across a webpage with links to illegal content.
There are always new torrent websites being created, so this new browser plug-in aims to keep on top of new illegal download websites. Technical director of MUSO James Mason explains: "A key area of anti-piracy is to constantly be seeking out the hottest new illegal file sharing sites. While we already automate this discovery process, in addition to crowd-sourcing this data from our users, this plug-in would take this crowd-sourcing process to the next level."
However the plug-in will not collect any information from the user or track their web habits. It is only programmed to search webpages for links to illegal download websites. A report bar will show the user how many files have been found and submitted to the MUSO database.
Using MUSO could save user’s time and energy when seeking out online piracy, as Mason explains: "Consider the recent example of Lady Gaga encouraging her fans to send in any illegal download links they found for her recently leaked album. If these fans had installed the MUSO plug-in, merely viewing the illegal download links in their web browser would report these links to MUSO, streamlining the entire process. Because this process can run 100% transparently in the background, it means anyone who wants to help tackle the problem of piracy can do so simply by installing a browser plug-in."
