“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.” - Lester Freamon

If the Wire taught us anything, it’s that shit tends to turn sour when you follow the money. And finally, after months years of having it in our back pocket, a Google compliance executive has given us the chance to run with that reference after he spoke out during a BBC Newsnight debate. Thanks to Digital Music News for the heads up on this one.

Google UK compliance manager Theo Bertram said that while Google complies with take-down requests roughly 2 million times per month, adding that “It’s not for Google to go around the web, judging what is or isn’t legal and I don’t think people would want us to,” he went further to imply that the most effective way to cut down on piracy would be to, you guessed it, chase the money.

“But our research shows however much you do on filtering or blocking,” he said “what is much more effective is to go after the money – to remove the financial underpinnings, the advertising, the payment processes.”

Unfortunately this has the potential to blow-up in his, and Google’s face, mainly since plenty of file sharing websites and blogs are registered with Google AdSense. Ever heard of the Ouroboros snake, dude?