Web Sheriff - History

History

Web Sheriff was founded in 2000 by former music attorney and industry consultant John Giacobbi, who acts as president, managing director, and is referred to in the press as the "Web Sheriff". Prior to forming Web Sheriff, Giacobbi had been an independent consultant to record labels and artists including Village People. Giacobbi has said that the formation of the company evolved from his desire to help Village People retain their rights on the internet, as copyright infringements and the selling of bootleg CDs by "fake bands, fake sites or fake names" had become a major problem for the band at that time.

In 2005, the company was directly responsible for the removal of the Ken Bigley execution footage videos posted on a terrorist website after Bigley's beheading. Web Sheriff related that it was approached by The Mail on Sunday after authorities had refused to intervene citing a lack of power. The video was hosted on a website entitled "headlessamericans.com" and the ISP initially refused to take it down by saying it was protected by "freedom of speech", but complied finally after 48 hours of argument. In the same year, in work done for The Mail on Sunday, the company spokesman, writing in that newspaper, disclosed that Web Sheriff also closed down the extreme pornographic strangulation sites at the center of the notorious Jane Longhurst murder case.

Web Sheriff first came to international notoriety when it was hired by Prince in September 2007 to "disappear entirely from the internet." The star's spokesman related that "Prince believes strongly that as an artist the music rights must remain with the artist and thus copyrights should be protected across the board." "Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights." Web Sheriff announced it would launch lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay on behalf of Prince if they refused compliance in removing links to his unauthorized photos, videos, and music. Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, dismissed the threats, stating that American law was not applicable in Sweden. YouTube complied by removing over 2,000 videos from their site and eBay removed more than 300 auctions. In November 2007, three fans sites were given notice to remove all images of the singer, his lyrics and "anything linked to Prince's likeness". Some of the Prince fans fought back, formed their own organization called "Prince Fans United" and hired an attorney. Multiple unauthorized overseas online sites selling merchandise featuring Prince were shut down.

Village People used Web Sheriff's services in 2007 to send 500 "take down" notices to YouTube relating to a video with footage of Hitler and other prominent Nazis dancing and singing to their song, "Y.M.C.A.". Web Sheriff's comment about the video was: "It's highly inappropriate. Consider that the song's composers were both Jewish." In February 2008, the company announced that Village People was suing The Pirate Bay for millions of dollars for enabling illegal downloads of "Y.M.C.A.".

Nick Bracegirdle with Chicane hired Web Sheriff in 2007 to prevent leaks from his album, Somersault, after self-financing it by selling his Ferrari and mortgaging his home. This followed Chicane's 2003 album, Easy to Assemble being so widely pirated by a Russian counterfeiter alone, selling thousands of copies with a sleeve from a previous album with the title digitally removed, that it was never officially released.

In 2007, when Bloc Party's album A Weekend in the City leaked three months previous to release, their record label, V2 Records, hired the anti-piracy company to stop the leakage as the album was intended to make the band popular on an international basis. Web Sheriff at first appealed to fan sites to not post links to the album out of respect for the band. Whenever this approach did not work, widespread uploaders were tracked down and sent letters that referred to possible prosecution. Said to face a possible one million illegal MP3 files downloaded, according to V2, the leakage was reduced to an insignificant amount.

When Qtrax introduced their new file sharing site in January 2008, Web Sheriff notified the site on behalf of Prince, Van Morrison and The Black Crowes that regardless of whether the music companies supported the service, individual artists would have to give their approval.

In 2008, Van Morrison hired the company to contact fan sites and demand that photos, lyrics and other copyrighted material be removed from fan sites. His manager stated that posting the photos were an invasion of Morrison's privacy. Through the wishes of the artist, all related videos on YouTube and elsewhere were removed promptly from the Internet. The two most popular fan sites closed down soon after they were notified.

Bryan Adams used Web Sheriff's services to remove thousands of low quality bootleg video clips from YouTube and replace them with official videos on his own channel. The company has stated that the new channel was a success and had 187 million views one and one-half years later.

When "Brother Sport", the first song from Animal Collective's album Merriweather Post Pavilion leaked in November 2008, Web Sheriff posted to Grizzly Bear's blog that they were the "global-leak-source of the track" and asked for an apology to be posted on the blog for a week to Domino Records, Animal Collective and Web Sheriff. Grizzly Bear band member Ed Droste complied and apologized stating "The Web Sheriff is just doing his job, and we're all aware of the damage internet file sharing is doing to album sales." The album leaked a month early and while Web Sheriff said it was "virtually impossible to completely put an album back in the box after a leak", the company was able to remove 90% or 10,000 of the links.

RLSLOG, called one of the world's most popular release news sites, was taken offline in January 2009 through efforts by Web Sheriff. The site was shut down by complaints by Web Sheriff to its web site host and bandwidth provider.

Bob Dylan used the company's services pro bono to protect his charity Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart following its leak in October 2009. Web Sheriff also removed unauthorized videos of Dylan from YouTube, replacing them with official ones on Dylan's channel.

The company protected Adele's album, 21 with ninety-nine percent of the leaks removed prior to the album's release, according to Web Sheriff.

When Lady Gaga's, Born This Way leaked a week before its 2011 release, fans were offered official material such as tracks and videos in return for not posting copies of it on sites. Web Sheriff reported that when a mailbox was set up for reporting leaks, tens of thousands of fans responded and sent in links to copies due to the fans' loyalty and bond to the artist.

In July 2011, Web Sheriff announced that it was taking legal action against a Russian website that has copied the Web Sheriff trademark and also purports to offer the same services as the British anti-piracy company. American and Russian litigators were retained for the "intercontinental legal attack" against the Russian site.

In February 2012, Twitter released a disclosure of two years of DMCA take-down notices, with an article in The Huffington Post noting Web Sheriff's work for Magnolia Pictures was responsible for a third of the 4,000 messages Twitter received to remove links to unauthorized posting of movies and songs. Web Sheriff's "aggressive activity" at Twitter for Magnolia Pictures was also the feature of an article in The Hollywood Reporter.

In March 2012, Noel Edmonds revealed to the Daily Mail how after being informed of a page on Facebook entitled 'Somebody please kill Noel Edmonds' and being unable to convince Facebook to take it off, he hired Web Sheriff to trace the source. Through contact with Facebook headquarters, the firm was able to connect it to a Ph.D. university student and Edmonds resolved the matter in a face to face meeting with the student instead of reporting it to the police.