The BCGuardian Blog – BCGuardian

BCGuardian Launches Verus

For nearly a decade, BCGuardian has supported rights owners to ensure fair compensation for creators’ efforts. The challenges we face have evolved, but the objectives have largely remained the same – limit the visibility and reach of unauthorized content on the web.

Achieving these objectives relies, to varying extents, on a process of notice-and-takedown. However, the most urgent content protection challenge today is not one to be fought under the existing notice-and-takedown paradigm.

The rapid pace of AI development, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), is surpassing rights owners’ current content protection strategies. LLMs are training on rights owners’ protected content, raising critical challenges which cannot be addressed through an outdated model of detection and enforcement.

LLMs are training on rights owners’ protected content, raising critical challenges which cannot be addressed through an outdated model of detection and enforcement.

This is why we created Verus.

Verus is a first-of-its-kind AI Content Intelligence Platform. It provides rights owners insight into the use of their content by nearly a dozen of the market’s leading LLMs. At the core of Verus is a proprietary interrogation algorithm which samples content from authorized works to determine the likelihood of inclusion within a model’s training data.

Verus also offers features for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) enabled models and for model output matching. Our module for RAG-enabled models facilitates the detection of content retrieved from online sources which is synthesized into responses. The output module detects reproduction of content in LLM responses. Such output can be generated following prompting of models by Verus or delivered by rights owners through our BYOO (“Bring Your Own Output”) feature.

Verus offers rights owners the opportunity to take a significant step toward solving the challenge of uncompensated use of copyrighted content in AI training.

Verus achieves this by providing rights owners with quantifiable and replicable data related to the use of their content within LLMs. It provides the evidentiary support required for audits of licensed content or for legal escalation related to unlicensed content. Verus enables advocacy by rights owners and trade organizations by providing data to support industry standards. It enables rights owners to signal transparently to internal and external stakeholders about their content’s exposure to unauthorized training. And most importantly, Verus encourages ethical practices in LLM training by empowering rights owners to ensure their intellectual property rights are respected.

Verus encourages ethical practices in LLM training by empowering rights owners to ensure their intellectual property rights are respected.

We believe in adequate compensation for rights owners’ contributions to the tremendous potential AI unlocks. Verus is the tool to provide rights owners the intelligence required to navigate the intersection of AI innovation and copyright protection.

We’re thrilled to debut Verus, and hope you will be a part of the story.

Internet Intermediaries as an Effective Enforcement Tactic

Dan Seymour

A common enforcement tactic regarding websites offering copyright or trademark infringing content involves preparing a formal Cease and Desist notice to the site explaining that they are infringing and detailing the specific instances of infringement found on the site. This tactic can and does work in many cases. But what happens when that notice goes unanswered and the site continues to infringe? This is particularly true of sites operated by individuals in jurisdictions that may not respect the laws of the country in which the content owner operates and from which the notice is sent. It seems that litigation may be the only recourse.

But litigation is expensive, time consuming, and does not always result in the complete cessation of infringement. Fortunately, another tactic exists that rightsholders can use: Go after the intermediaries (or 3^rd parties) that are supporting the operation of the site. And by “go after” we mean send them notices that their customer is using their service(s) to infringe your rights, and request that they stop allowing this. Of course, successfully convincing intermediaries to cease doing business with a customer does not necessarily mean that customer can’t find other intermediaries. But the point is to make it as difficult as possible for recalcitrant operators of infringing websites to continue to infringe.

So, who are these intermediaries? An answer to that question will, no doubt, vary from site to site but, generally speaking, intermediaries include the following:

Hosting Providers

Websites are typically hosted by 3^rd parties whose business is built, in part, upon the revenue generated from the hosting services provided to their customers. Without some kind of hosting provider, websites would not be accessible to Internet users. Thus, hosting providers offer crucial services and serve as a single point of failure for website operators. That is, if they lose their host, they lose their ability to continue to infringe.

Payment Processors

Websites whose business model consists of selling pirated goods, such as infringing eBooks, movies, music, software and/or games, typically do so using some kind of payment processor. These comprise 3^rd parties who process payments on behalf of their customers’ ecommerce sites generally in exchange for a percentage of each transaction. Convincing them to cease doing business with the infringers removes an essential part of their business, i.e., the ability to collect payments for the sale of their infringing goods.

Search Engines

Websites commonly generate more revenue when they generate more traffic. And more traffic comes with increased visibility. Search engines have long been a vital resource for operators to increase the chances that users will visit their websites. This is also true for the operators of infringing websites. Fortunately, most of the well-established search engines will remove listings from their indexes when provided with sufficient evidence establishing that the listings lead to infringing content.

Advertising Providers

Generally, infringing websites generate their revenue in two distinct ways: By placing advertisements on their sites for which advertisers compensate them and/or by placing advertisements on 3^rd party sites seeking to drive traffic to their site. In either situation, 3^rd parties support the activity and are generally amenable to processing notices of infringement.

Domain Name Registrars

While domain name registrars truly count as 3^rd party intermediaries, their liability is somewhat limited when it comes to the content of websites. On the other hand, if there is a trademark dispute regarding a domain name, content owners may use the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (commonly known as the UDRP) to force registrars to turn over the infringing domain name to the content owner. While this will not force the website itself offline, it will take away its domain name, which is a key ingredient in advertising, search engine optimization and, to an extent, payment processing.

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Challenges Bred by the Modern Model of Counterfeit Sales

Mike Candore

Gone are the days when the threat posed by counterfeit goods was confined to the reach of the street corner vendor. Infringing merchants today rely on an increasingly sophisticated patchwork of otherwise legitimate third-party intermediaries to promote and enable their unlawful activity. This modern online sales and distribution model presents three core challenges for rights owners to understand and navigate.

Challenge No. 1: Increased visibility enables pirate sites to compete directly with rights owners and legitimate distributors like never before.

Third-party services have made it easier than ever for infringing merchants to promote their illegitimate goods across some of the most trafficked websites and marketplaces on the web. These services enable bad actors to purchase and place advertisements for infringing products side-by-side with legitimate products and promote their listings to the top of search engine or online marketplace search results.

The lower cost structure associated with the sale of counterfeit products can make it difficult for rights owners to compete, as bad actors can commit larger bids to compete in online advertising while simultaneously offering lower product prices. In an environment where ad placement is granted to the highest bidder, infringing merchants can capture a disproportionate share of voice, increasing the threat of sales erosion and indirectly increasing rights owners’ advertising spend.

Challenge No. 2: Platforms and tools built around merchant anonymity enable bad actors to hide in plain sight, or worse, create the veneer of legitimacy.

Some marketplaces and platforms are built around merchant anonymity and even compound the challenge by offering supplemental services to promote or incentivize customers to buy from anonymous sellers. For independent pirate sites, the deployment of a complementary suite of third-party services can provide a polished customer experience with little-to-no development required on the part of the pirate site. Taken together, these services make it very difficult for a customer to understand from whom they are buying and may lead customers to believe they are purchasing legitimate goods. Along with the threat of sales erosion, this increases several other risks such as brand dilution and consumer product safety concerns.

Challenge No. 3: Barriers to re-entry are commonly low and subject to limited controls, enabling infringing merchants to reappear after enforcement or hedge enforcement by operating multiple outlets simultaneously.

The analogy of IP protection as a game of whack-a-mole may historically be associated with digital anti-piracy efforts, but as counterfeit hard goods are increasingly sold online, the parallels become apparent. With the proliferation of competing online intermediaries in the value chain, it has never been easier for bad actors to maintain a revolving door of service providers that will enable them to temporarily evade detection and enforcement.

More challenging is the intermediary which enables bad actors to hedge against enforcement by operating numerous outlets simultaneously or which does not perform due diligence during account creation, thereby allowing the same bad actor to create a new account following initial detection and enforcement. This challenge perpetuates Challenge Nos. 1 and 2 as it subverts effective and meaningful IP protection.

The news is not all bad, however. Many intermediaries are household names in online search, e-commerce, payment processing, and web hosting. Most are committed to the removal of infringing and illegal activity from their platforms and have stated policies for intellectual property infringement. Some have committed significant resources to the development and management of streamlined enforcement channels for rights owners. Learning how to leverage and integrate the tools made available to rights owners should be at the core of an effective brand and content protection program in today’s online ecosystem.

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