IFPI comes up with plan b (or, more like it, plan z) to "end piracy"

The IFPI - which is the RIAA pretending to be an international body - has come up with a new plan which it reckons will bring about an end to online music piracy.

This time, it's going to get British police and the credit card companies to do the job for it.

The idea is that it'll find a website which is flogging tracks online; details will be passed to the police; public money will be spent investigating the sites and, if the police agree there's something dodgy going on, Mastercard and Visa will be alerted and they'll stop processing payments for the site.

The idea of targeting people who are selling tracks they don't own online is a fair one - there's a clear difference between people who share music out of love of music, and people who sell things that aren't theirs out of love of money.

Mind you, anyone who can get past that rubbish Verified By Visa "security" box probably deserves to download half the internet as a reward anyway.

It's unlikely the scheme will be a success - it's being run through City Of London police who are unlikely to do more than scratch the surface of the problem; there are other ways to make money online than just taking credit card details and this won't have an effect on sharing where no money is changing hands - which seems to be most cases. But at least the IFPI are mounting their Quixotic efforts against people who are diverting money that might otherwise have been spent on official products.