The IP Registry

PSI, an organisation that helps publishers eliminate subscription fraud and IP misuse, has announced the launch of a global registry of IP addresses.

On average, 58 per cent of IP ranges held by publishers are inaccurate, PSI has found. Because of this, a significant amount of content is open to unlicensed access, and libraries and publishers are likely to receive inaccurate usage statistics. Until now, the systems for keeping the IP ranges accurate and up to date have been cumbersome, time-consuming and inefficient for everyone involved.

The IP Registry will make it easier for libraries to communicate any changes in their authentication details to all publishers who sign up to use the service, saving them significant time and reducing errors. The registry already contains 1.5 billion validated IP addresses for over 60,000 content licensing organisations worldwide.

Andrew Pitts, managing director of PSI, said: 'We are the experts in this field as we have been working for over 10 years with leading publishers to identify IP misuse and abuse, cleaning up their authentication databases as we go along.

'As a result, we have a database of clean and accurate IP details for institutions all over the world. Given IP addresses are still the major method of authentication within in our community we know that this service will benefit publishers and their customers enormously.'