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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?"
Agreed. It also represents a lot of possibilities for Free Software, as filtering out these bogus files is not the kind of thing that will take place behind the closed doors of Kazaa or LimeWire.
I expect we'll see the popularity of tools such as gtk-gnutella skyrocket, and Linux along with it. Once again, Open Source will save the day.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Suburban moms won't touch a computer. They're evil, they're Hal 9000, besides, what if they screw them up? Most women are so technophobic that if they had run the world from the start, humanity would still be in caves if we even had survived. They wouldn't have let us have any stupid gadgets like fire and the wheel.
How ya like dat?
Oh come on. Do you use your CDs as coasters or something? It's funny how people use new technology as an excuse to award themselves rights that never previously existed. Back in the olden days, if you forgot your book on the bus you just went out and bought a new one. You didn't bitch and moan and write the publisher, demanding a new copy. When tapes came along, people started making backups of their LPs. This led to some piracy, but well within manageable levels. But now people have gotten the idea that the rights of the copyright owner must come second to their the inalienable right to access any song whenever and whereever they want.
I've got news for you, buddy. Our society is not optimized for fringe cases, nor should it be. If you want a backup copy of a CD then make it yourself. The right of the music owners to not have their works freely pirated is more important than the odd chance that you might be walking down the street with your mobile-iPod and you suddenly want to connect to a server in Finland and download this song that you used to own (well actually you borrowed the CD from your brother-in-law and never gave it back) but was destroyed in a freak accident when you actually dropped it down an elevator chute.
Maybe in the future, you will be able to purchase an individual license to a song. In return for giving up some freedoms (e.g. the anonymity of buying a CD), you can become a registered "user" of a particular song. In that case, you can download the song from whereever you want, but you probably won't be able to resell it later, like you can with a CD.
-a
The advantage of the GPL is that your customers can maintain and upgrade your software, even after you go bankrupt.
How to rationalize theft.