Spoofing P2P Networks as Marketing Plot

prostoalex writes "Salon's technology section talks about major music labels spoofing the peer-to-peer networks. The users of AudioGalaxy, Gnutella or KaZaa have probably seen a surge of fake MP3 files when conducting a search on a popular title. The MP3 looks legit, but contains a 20 second clip played over and over. Such promotional tracks were especially popular with newest releases, such as Eminem and No Doubt, as pointed out in the article. Who posted the fake tracks to the p2p networks? Could it be, as Salon suggests, a suburban mom, who does not agree with controversial lyrics, or would it be the label, trying to prevent piracy and promote the new album at the same time?"

Comments

CRC check?

[Anonymous Coward]

It almost seems as if we should start CRC checking the files through the P2P app. Get several, verified versions floating around at common bitrates (and a VBR version)...
That way we don't have to deal with garbage like this, and also have a guaranteed, legit (so to speak), quality copy (at least at the said bitrate) to download.

Re:CRC check?

[scott1853]

Choose the worse scenario:

The RIAA starts using these checksums to flag what is pirated and quickly shuts down everything.

You create some massive database (CDDB) created by the public, for the public, and then after a few years have some greedy bastards (GraceNote) close it up and charge money for access to it?

Searching...

[Mars Hill]

Anybody who uses a fileshare client can quickly figure out that if a file is not multisourced, it might not be legit. These files will not be kept on peoples drives, they will get deleted right away, and then their presence will shrink into oblivion. It's a sneaky idea, though.

the price you pay

[the_rev_matt]

That's the price you pay for not paying for your music. I'm quite serious about that. If you are getting music for free, why bitch about the fact that it isn't perfect? If you're getting music for some cool indie band that doesn't have a label, then chances are they aren't spoofed files. If you're getting music from todays top 40 charts, then you obviously haven't paid for something that is generally not free. The labels are just taking advantage of that fact and trying to promote the track you are trying to get without paying for it.

Note, I'm not preaching about how you "shouldn't steal music" (see my rant about what's wrong with DRM). I'm just saying if you get something free, don't bitch that it isn't perfect.

Salon says...

[doorbot.com]

Actually, Salon quotes Eric Garland, CEO of peer-to-peer measuring service BigChampagne:

"What you want to do is excite the consumer and titillate and create demand." He notes, however, that the "danger of try-before-you-buy" is that if a user doesn't like a previewed track, "then the industry and that record would have benefited from [that user's] ignorance."

Hmm. Now isn't that interesting.

So...

RIAA doesn't want Joe Consumer listening to the crap (Top 40 I guess) they release before he buys the album, because then he might realize it's crap and the RIAA is just liberating money from a fool.

OK, so let's go with that for just a moment here...

That means that what the RIAA releases as "today's hottest bands" are really just a bunch of second-rate hacks (not even first rate!) who've been blitz-marketed into every teenager's record collection. So, as Bono (right?) said on that VH1 special (paraphrased), "It's not casette copying that's killing the music industry, it's crap music killing the music industry."

Frankly, I think that has always been true.

What I want to know is... if the band is so unbelievably fantastic, why do they need all the heavy marketing? Sure, some marketing to appeal to the fence-sitters, but you don't preach to the choir.

So, the RIAA is spending billions to market Britney Spears to make us believe she's the best thing since sliced bread (or better yet, to make us think it more than we already do it seems), when Britney fans will buy the CDs anyways. And somehow they claim they're losing money here. Hmm.

All the word games, legal lunges, and slight of hand gets old after a while. Is anyone else getting a vision of the RIAA as another Ross Perot jumping in an out of the "race" all the while annoying us with lots of charts and a funny voice?

The music industry finally has the right idea.

[CurtisRWC]

I think this is a really good tactic for the music industry to use in their struggle against P2P piracy. Yes, piracy. I mean, regardless of whether or not you personally are downloading music or other files in a legal fashion, there are tons of other people (likely the majority) of people who are using this to do something which is considered illegal by law. Is it a good law? Doesn't matter. It is the law.

So, when Joe College Student downloads the latest MTV-hyped band that sounds like metal, grunge, and rap all thrown together in a blender, he gets a 20 second clip and an advertisement. What is Joe going to do? This is kinda/sorta like the highschool kid who spends $60 on a bag of off-the-shelf herbs and spices.

Now, here's the thing that really makes this a Good Thing. If this becomes common practice amongst the music industry, it could very well have the unexpected side effect of thwarting legal attempts to get P2P services shut down. I'm not a lawyer, etc, etc, but I'd think that you would be hard pressed to present a case to shut down a service that you use yourself.

And of course, now that the ante has been upped, I'm sure the P2P community will respond by improving their software to add features to combat the music industry's latest tactics. I'm not sure what form this will take, but perhaps some sort of public key watermark by trusted encoders or preview features or something even better.

In an odd, preverse sort of way, this is almost the first step in making peace between the P2P community and the music industry.

Surprised this hasn't been taken to the next level

[SlashChick]

From the article: "MetaFilter's Haughey says 'record companies would love it if people were frightened of file-sharing networks and never touched them again.'"

I'm really surprised the record companies haven't taken advantage of this to advertise their pay services. Why play just a looping 10-second piece of the song when you can play a clip and then say, "To get the whole song legally for just $1.95, visit Pressplay.com" or something to that effect? I know that eMusic and some other services used to advertise their presence in the ID3 comment tag of the MP3, but this would seem to be wholeheartedly more effective.

The real question is, do the music companies really want these for-pay services to succeed, or do they want them to fail so they can frame Internet users as thieves? I'd say that both viewpoints exist in the RIAA. That's why these services aren't even advertised, especially not in a means such as the above, which IMHO would be quite effective.

I worry sometimes that all this "music revolution" will give us is uncopyable CDs. This would be a huge disappointment to those of us who don't want to gyp the artists -- we just want music in a more flexible format than a CD can offer. I, for one, am hoping that the potential of mass music distribution via the Internet can become a reality. If the record companies only squash the P2P networks without providing an alternative, this will only serve to alienate customers. On the other hand, if the record companies work with us to provide a low-cost way to distribute music legally (with rights to copy it to other devices), both the record companies and artists have a chance to become much more profitable while continuing to make their customers happy. I sincerely hope the latter will occur.

Price has nothing to do with this

[Bouncings]

I have to take exception with this. The RIAA is exploiting it because it is open not because it's free. What does cost have to do with this? This is no different than Microsoft releasing a bunch of fake Linux patches to discredit Linux. Wouldn't that be perfectly OK, because Linux is free and you get what you paid for? You're some kind of lying, stealing bastard to get something for free aren't you?

It's wrong for someone to write a program that exploits obvious problems with Microsoft outlook, but exploiting p2p or iMac firmware issues on CD players is a perfectly acceptable way to "get back at" those darned copyright infringers?

News flash: Most of the interstate highway system is free. Does that give me the right to blow up a highway? Hardly.