Websites that profit from piracy are being stopped from making money from advertising on their sites.

A new initiative could see adverts being withdrawn from film and music pirating sites and those selling fake goods.

High profile technology firms such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have signed up to the initiative.

The majority of pirate sites are kept running by the revenue they generate from adverts on the site which helps to pay high bandwidth bills.

There has been many instances in the past where rights holders have tried to deal with sites infringing copyright by using take-down notices seeking to get copy removed from the web. The scheme gives these rights holders another avenue by targeting adverts that run on these webpages.

The scheme will work by enabling rights holders to inform an ad network that their adverts are running on a pirate website. The responsibility then lies with the network to investigate and pull the adverts if they agree the site is engaged in copyright theft.

The accused sites are allowed to file evidence in their defence if they believe the accusation is wrong.

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