Slashdot Mirror
Decoy Files on P2P Sites Become Ad Vehicles
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Some record labels hire outside companies to plant fake files on peer-to-peer sites. Now, labels are turning these decoy files into vehicles for marketing to music pirates by inserting promotional material into the files, such as an eight-minute clip from a Jay-Z concert, the Wall Street Journal reports." From the article: "'The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us,' says Jay-Z's attorney, Michael Guido. 'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience,' and 'this technology allows us to market back to them.'"
So, like a lot of things on Slashdot, I was interested in this hip new technology. I hopped on eDonkey and downloaded a bunch of Jay-Z until I found the golden ticket.
c ation.html) and there it was, a registration form for a free boat!
... something called an "Average Out of Court Settlement." Yeah, like I'm going to pay you $22,000 for that! As if! I think they want you to pay that if you want a free boat. I'm not stupid though--I know how this scam works--they give you a free boat but after taxes and registration, it's not even close to free anymore.
It was great, it said I had won a free boat! So I went to the URL in the file (http://www.riaa.com/tricks/freeboat/warrantappli
I start filling this out, you know, understandable things like name, address, average household income, what mp3s was I downloading when I won, where they are on my hard drive, which attorney would be representing me if a court case broke out--you know, the usual.
But once I hit submit, I got some law-talking guy spamming my e-mail address non-stop! Trying to sell me some product I'm not even interested in
People on the internet are so stupid sometimes.
My work here is dung.
So they admit that filesharers are the active music audience.
They're one step away from admitting filesharers buy more music.
I go onto a p2p site and download this advert for the concert but mistakenly get the whole thing?
Will I be arrested and thrown in jail?
liqbase
It's about time the record labels caught on somewhat. Just because you give something out for free doesn't mean you're not going to make money off of it. I'm sure Google's business model with youtube will involve this type of thing somehow - giving content to people for free without them realizing they're watching ads.
This is just giving them ideas what to pirate next.
Now people are just waiting for jenna jameson to start doing short clip advertisements for her (pun)deeply(/pun) involved movies.
I see this as similar to music radio stations, where you get free music, but there's advertising that comes with it, and you can't avoid hearing the ads.
Great, now just put the whole song in there as an advertisement for your concerts and we'll be square.
Though it makes sense from a marketing perspective, this seems to compromise their position legally. If they really don't want people downloading the P2P files, then why are they spending so much money to talk directly to them OVER P2P? Could leave a defense much like the First Commenter said - just walk into court and claim you were downloading all of that illegal music because you wanted to see the ads you heard about on the Internet.
Sean R. Baker
CDT, United States Army
"Lead me, follow me,
or get out of my way."
There's marketing and advertising on teh internets?
In other news, the Sun rises in the East.
"Michael Guido --'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience"
Wrong-o, Guido the Killer Pimp. Nothing has ever been stolen via p2p. The words you are looking for is "users are violating the copyright of...".
Where were you when the voynix came?
If they claim this audience can be monetized, how can they consider it to be non-legit?
i've seen many, MANY of these on gnutella. you download a short video file, and it's just a still image of an iPod, for a few seconds. not sure who was behind it, but they were all over the place.
They could have gone with WMA files that open goatse sites, to teach those pirates a lesson!
But seriously, don't most P2P clients have user rankings of files? Maybe they need a better moderating system, like the fine one here on slashdot.
"But judge, the only way I could get the exclusive pre-release video of [hyper-hyped band/singer-songwriter/pretty face] was to steal random music from a P2P service. I didn't want to, I obey the law and have never stolen anything in my life. But [record label] would only hide the must-have exclusive video in fake song files. I didn't know which songs they were, or which ones were fake or real. So I had to download several thousand of them to finally find the video."
Case dismissed.
If the ads have little effect, would that go someway toward proving file sharing does not affect music purchases to the degree the RIAA claim it does?
Its not just music. I recently was taking a MS exam and I had bought a "study guide" and an office mate of mine got his ripped insted of buying. Both had the exact same questions but diffrent answers and reasons why one is wrong/right and why. You get what you pay for, errr steal.
I would have second thoughts about hiring any lawyer that can't distinguish between two entirely different sets of laws. I'd half expect Mr. Guido to charge jaywalkers with attempted murder based on his statements here.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
...so if somebody just wanted to watch an 8 minute clip of a Jay Z concert, they wouldn't know the difference!
/* No Comment */
So let me get this straight, they know people on P2P sites downloading music are potential purchasers, and that anything they hear from P2P they may buy. Yet their solution is instead of letting them download the music they are looking for and listen to it, possibly purchase it, they hijack the file with something that may be wholly unrelated? How is that targetted marketing? If someone is searching for favorite band X and they get instead an advertisement clip for band Y, how does that make them more likely to buy Y? Wouldn't they have been looking for Y in the first place then?
This also demonstrates the RIAA's complete misunderstanding of how people use P2P sites. Users know that there are broken songs, seeded fakes, etc, etc, so when they hit play and it's not what they were looking for then they move on to another file and delete the incorrect one. They don't hang around and say "gee, this isn't at all what I was looking for but I'll listen to the whole thing anyway." To quote MC Frontalot (Romantic Cheapskate): "Whatcha wasting my time for? My bandwidth's limited, I don't get, like, free internet."
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Stand back, the music industry may have just grown a brain cell.
Do you have ESP?
"You get what you pay for, errr steal."
Did the office mate actually steal it? Or did he (as is more likely) duplicate a file off of some p2p service? Also, if the study guide is a damaged one with trick answers, it certainly is not someone's intellectual property. You could not even call it copyright violation.
Where were you when the voynix came?
So now they are advertising to people for free and suing them afterward! These RIAA fuckers have some nerve.
I tend to buy a CD AFTER I download the songs to listen to.
If I like the songs, I go out and support the artist.
I really don't see why the RIAA is bitching about how delaying the sale of the material for a few days is crippling the music industry as a whole. p2p file sharing is the best free advertising you could possibly have, why else do startup bands release their music on the 'net?
.-.
But if I was a music pirate, I'd stop an MP3 from playing the second I heard something that wasn't supposed to be in the song I downloaded.
"'The concept here is making the peer-to-peer networks work for us,' says Jay-Z's attorney, Michael Guido. 'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience,' and 'this technology allows us to market back to them.'"
.. I thought the goal of this was to get people to stop using P2P networks by forcing them to listen to 8 mins of JAY-Z.
Oh
1 min is about all the torture I can take. I guess its back to the record store for me !
A million monkeys and this is the best sig they could come up with...
I hope this backfires. If the media companies can make a legitimate try at making money from P2P networks, then why not the companies they're taking to court?
Method of processing duck feet
Michael Guido: '... peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property ...'
No they're not. Stealing IP would mean they are ripping the tunes off and claiming they wrote it, like with software. They are simply stealing copies of the recording, which (to some) isn't wrong - not all artists want their music to come with an EULA and hefty price tag. Get the music free, and come pay for a concert ticket if you like what you hear! Now THAT'S the way to go. Copyright-obsessed idiots.
========
77 77 77 2e 6d 65 6c 76 69 6e 73 2e 63 6f 6d
This will only turn attention from the artist who's name is being used as camouflaged over the ads. THis could possible hurt the popularity of the artist. "Piracy is wrong but we'll use deception to advertise..." Evil is as evil does.
It's about time the Industry starts playing the game.
Although this is a very cruel approach to advertising, it gives them the advantage to not only strike back at the community yet be able to advertise for their clients / artists as well.
Now you must stop the lawsuits and expect penalties that come from falsifying files.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I just finished downloading the new Metallica album and started listening to it. Instead of hearing Metallica, I heard an advertisement for the new Megadeth Live DVD. So I went back and downloaded both the real Metallica album AND the new Megadeth Live DVD. :)
"thats bullshit. filesharers are taking stuff without paying. dont cloak this theft in some argfument about it being ok because they buy it anyway. if thats the case, why pirate it?"
To test drive the car before they buy it, jacktard.
How would you feel, if you bought a new CD, stuck it in your stereo, only to have William Hung's voice coming out of your speakers?
-AC
I wonder about the status of that 8-minute Jay-Z clip they're giving you. IANAL, but since you obviously didn't click "yes" on any of the record label's copyright or terms-of-use screens to get onto the P2P network, and since there's no way for them to make you view their copyright notice before you get your hands on the file, and since they are willfully giving it away for free themselves, do they own that clip anymore? Would the fact that they are deliberately giving out these clips negate any claim on enforcing the copyright of that material?
There was an interesting project a few years back called RIAA-mix. Basically, it took a bunch of decoy files from P2P (you know, the ones that only have the first 5 seconds or so of the song before going blank or staticky) and remixed them. The idea was, since the RIAA gave those specific clips out themselves, they were releasing them into the public domain to be bastardized by us shady Internet masher-uppers.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Why do these people still call P2P networks 'sites'? They're goddamn networks, for crying out loud.
Looks like they're taking a page from Amazon's marketing book, even the part about making a profit.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
A boat's a boat, but the mystery box could be anything. It could even be a boat! You know how much we wanted one of those!
Actually, "those imbeciles" didn't build the $35 Billion industry, their predecessors did. For all intents and purposes, they inherited it. I'd wager that very few of the people who were around during the rise of the large commercial record business are still there. No, I think most of them -- if they have any brains -- have cashed in their stock options and are laughing into their martinis, headed for Bali.
The imbeciles currently in charge of Sony/Warner/BMG were busily driving one of the biggest corporate empires ever created into the ground; it's only quite recently that they seem to have caught up to what a lot of people have been saying all along: there's a whole lot of money to be made in digital content if you play along and don't fight it every step of the way.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
if the choice was between having advertising unremovably intertwined with your free (illegal) music
There is the problem in a nutshell. You've come up with a fantastic idea! Now, how do you implement it?
Build ads into the P2P app? Hackers will have an anti-advert patch out inside of two days. Besides, nobody sits and watches their P2P app anyways. Mingle it with the MP3 files? Use Audacity and clip those bits out.
Exactly how are you going to force someone to watch advertising?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Spammers have been usnig P2P networks to distribute ads in teh disguise of files for a couple of years. How many hundreds of files have you downloaded, and found out they were spam for "Win a free iPod?"
I would dare think this a step in the right direction, even if it isn't THE right thing. By acknowledging that filesharers are active music buyers and advertising their wares on p2p, it brings them one step closer to realizing that p2p might be a useful marketing tool by encouraging people to buy more. Heck, the next step should just be to drop their lawsuits and we're all happy. (They can have their advertising there as well - people can sort through it to find the actual songs they're looking for)
Now you download the file.
Skip to 60% though it watch 3 seconds skip 80% though watch 2 seconds
Then sit down and start watching it.
Say the download took 30 mins or so its added a whole whopping 10 seconds to the person.
I dont really see that system working in the slighest.
But again my argument for something like this.
Get in car. goto shops. Park car. (10-15mins)
Get to shop. Walk around find something you want. (10 mins)
Get to counter queue to pay (5-10mins)
Get back to car + pay for car park (5mins)
Go Home (10-15)mins
Insert CD into player and listen.
Or i could just go and fine several cd's of the same ont he internet (5 mins)
Download (mutliple to get around posion files now) (45 mins)
Listen(1 mins)
Some things to point out.
a) I didnt have to move
b) It didnt cost me anything
c) I didnt have to go to shops with screaming kids and people getting in my way every 30 seconds
d) I didnt create polution
e) I could have probably started listening to things withing the first 5 mins of the download starting
To old people, everything is a site. My father talks about his "e-mail site" is down, for instance.
This behaviour goes hand in hand with [ab]use of the term downloading for any transfer of a file, regardless of the direction of transmission.
These stories are free but worth money.
Another entry in the Have-Your-Cake-And-Eat-It-Too Hall of Fame. They want to sue music fans for sharing files, yet they also want to market to them. They want them to stop sharing files, but they want them to share files so they will see their ads.
The RIAA has truly entered the Escherian phase of their downfall, where they have begun to swallow their own tails.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Who wants to listen to Jay Z?
"So, then... you don't mind if I -NOT STEAL- your SSN, driver's license info, ATM card # and PIN?"
Ah, the old fallacy used by those who have no idea what "theft" means. You are implying that if it is not theft, then it is OK. Are you not aware that the law books and moral codes are full of many different crimes that are not theft, but are still imagine that!!! wrong? The meanings of words change, but the meaning of "theft" has not.
"and a record is no longer a big, black, plastic disk"
Where did you get that idea? Only records are called records. No one calls a tape, CD, or mp3 file a "record" that I have ever heard at all.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Companies have become openly hostile towards their target customers lately that it's not funny. They may as well plaster disclaimers about wanting your money without having to give you a product or services all over their goods. Record companies want to simulatenously label you theives and sue you while tricking you into downloading their advertising advertising through the p2p they insist is only for theives. Games companies want to install copy protection that destroys hardware, force you to activate if you even want to use your product (but hey not more than twice because if you need that you're obviously a theif) and are even installing spyware on the computer (not to mention their slave labour work practices).
So much for making an honest buck. So much for fucking customer service. So much for honesty and decency. These people get no sympathy from me. Fuck the lot of them.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I can create near perfect analog copies of music by only humming the parts that are supposed to be in the song I am thinking of.
The fact that RIAA can do that is a weakness of the protocol. Of course, all good things like e-mail, nntp, napster and gopher, start out based on good user intentions. And then, it is fought with "noise". Fighting a free system with noise is the concept by which the bad people use the freedom of the system of abuse it, pollute it, and thus render it useless. Same happens to the media and the war or Iraq and North Korea. And the music industry.
Of course, one can easilly design an alternative P2P network with MD5 signed songs and user rating.... Such networks already exists. What? did you think that people only use ports 80 and 6667? Ha! There is a port which has all the newest DVDs available, bit-torrent-ly distributed and digitally encrypted. If you know how to get it...
Isn't the RIAA creating a legal loophole for people who download content from P2P networks? Ever since Madona posted her infamous comments to P2P there has been an ambiguity between bootleg content and RIAA uploaded content. If I am a law abiding person and I go to P2P to download content and I know that the RIAA is uploading content then it should be possible for me to download LEGAL content. Unfortunately, as a DOWNLOADER, I have no way of determining which content is allowed and which is disallowed. Therefore, since the RIAA is posting content that is legal for me to download then it should be possible to avoid any legal complications associated with downloading content because of this ambiguity. Also, since the content is ambiguous then when the download engin also uploads that same content there should not be any legal problems. In other words, the RIAA's content creats a legal path for download that obfuscates the difference between legal and illegal content.
$.03
You said: "The previous poster does no such thing. They state that copyright infringement is not theft" in response to my message. However, the post I was responding to clearly said "The concept of theft has grown to illicit copies of information.". I did see the message about "may or may not be a crime depending upon where you are", but I agreed with this one. I think you have some strings in this thread crossed and are objecting to my response to a posting that I did not respond to, and are misinterpreting my comments for the wrong message. I was responding to the one about SSN's and wallets. Check the real threads and come back, eh?
Where were you when the voynix came?
This is what everybody told the music industry for years: Don't try to fight down P2P, understand that these are your customers and give them an incentive to buy something from you instead of trying to force it down their throats. Now, after maybe six or seven years, the message got through.
Just imagine what would have happened if one of the major labels would have done this right from the beginning and what this would have done for their market share compared to the other ones who prefer to sue kids and grannies.
memomo: free web based language trainer DE-EN-ES-FR-IT
I'm suprised mentioned poor, starving, banging-Beyonce, Jigga what? Jay-Z. He's got to be getting a cut from the ads to. He's got 99 Problems and my lack of respect for him is one.
Hee Hee The drinking bird does all the work!
I always thought a perfect use of the p2p networks was to place low-bitrate files (128kb/s mp3's) with bumpers around announcing the artist. They could talk over them like a DJ. The point is that they get the songs out there as an advertisement to either buy the CD or download a CD quality file. They could do like they used to do and have an album version and a radio version (shorter), except that it would be a p2p version.
Get it on social networks, p2p networks, it would be the same as listening to the radio. It would build artist loyalty, it would get the record companies out of the payola business, it would let them more easily turn a profit on marginal acts because you can narrowcast this stuff. If I can think that stuff up, imagine what somebody who really had a stake in it could do.
But I'm convinced they're so worried about next quarter's profits that they can't build for the future. Oh well. Maybe someboy will be adventurous enough to try it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Every bit of free advertising that goes toward a band that isn't one of their over-hyped artists or an outright RIAA-built 'me too' band loses them money for all the advertising and costs gone into create popular artists that don't get shared.
And yes, I meant create. With the amount of control the RIAA has over the artists through radio/TV stations and advertising campaigns, the popularity of an artist can be correlated to how much money is used to back them and get public awareness out.
I download music almost every other day; call it piracy if you like, I'll raise the Jolly Roger on my car. Roughly half of it probably gets deleted within hours anyways. As a direct result of this, I buy 3-6 CDs a month. And of the last 20 CDs I have bought 2 or 3 of them have ever seen radio play, and not as much as a name-drop on TV. Friends and I share music we find on P2P services all the time, and I have actively seen people put down an Evanescence and 50 Cent CD in favor of music they heard from us.
And that is money wasted on the hype machine for every band that gets passed over in favor of a smaller name that you heard on a P2P yesterday. We are the customers that lose them money, and we must be stopped.
-Voice of an AC
This reminds me of a joke I once heard about Asian electronics manufacturers losing 5 cents on every chip they sold, but they planned to make up for it with higher volumes of sales.
On the one hand, I do think it's probably a good idea to advertise on P2P systems, because you just *might* boost your sales. But the worry would be that you are just increasing the volume of copies that are pirated.
Wierd Al, or someone like him, should come up with a song titled "Steal this song (so I can sue you)"
This doesnt work as a defence for sharing.
I dont think RIAA has ever sued anybody for downloading, only sharing.
It's a short list, I admit. Email any useful links if ya gott'em.
http://malfy.org/
Aren't these decoys going to clog all of the Internet tubes?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
because it makes too much sense. Instead of seeding junk advertisements, seed DEMOS. Lets say I want a copy of Love Shack on my ipod. I hit edonkey or whatever and download LoveShack.MP3. Surprise though, after 20 seconds of listening to it the music fades to the background and an announcer comes up.
Want a copy of Love Shack to put on your iPod? Just go to (pick a music store URL).com and enter coupon code 49152128 to purchase this track for only 75 cents.
Announcer voice goes out, and you hear another 30 seconds of the song. Then the announcer repeats his message. This announcement repeats 3-4 times during the song.
This would be an incredible hit with the public, they get the preview of the song, longer than usual, and get it at a reduced rate, and they pay for the music. Since the p2p network is doing the distro, there are not even any bandwidth costs involved for the labels. (for the advertising anyway) Everyone wins.
But nah, that'd make too much sense. Lets just sue them.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...you mean to tell me these people are openly admitting to spam a network with unsolicited advertising?
and I'm suppose to see the difference between this kind of activity, and the kind of activity that dumps billions of spam in people's email inboxes every day?
From a perspective of PRINCIPLE this is horrendous bullshit...
It seems to me that by putting the files up, they are giving permission to distribute them. Hence, no copyright infringement occurs.
They'd be really missing the point if they put adverts under a copyright protecting license. Then again, I wouldn't put it past them.
Excuse my ignorance, but if Jay-Z knocked on my door and said "Hi, I'm Jay-Z", I would respond "Who?" and not bat an eyelid.
So why can't they throw in an eight-minute clip from a Uriah Heep concert, or Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" occasionally, just to keep we miserable old gits happy occasionally?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yeah - weird isn't it? It's almost like... allowing people to download music for free... leads to more music sales!
How strange - how "downloading free copyrighted music" doesn't lead to more music sales... but apparently "allowing people to download free copyrighted music" makes them buy more music from you.
Of course, we all know the central issue is one of consent - clearly when people download free copyrighted music that I don't want them to, that hurts my business, even if it leads to more sales. However, when people download free copyrighted music that I've allowed them to download, even when they don't know whether or not I want them to download it, that helps my business.
Clearly there's some magical "spooky action at a distance" going on that means when someone downloads my copyrighted music it only hurts my business if I didn't want them to download it - if I don't mind the downloading it actually helps my-
*head explodes*
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"by making an unauthorized copy you are still taking (and therefore stealing) one of his rights"
Again, just because it is wrong or a violation does not make it theft. Also, this does not meet the definition of "Taking".
"If you had a wife, and I slept with her, have I violated your rights?..."
This is actually an appropriate analogy. Like the situation with copyright violation, this has nothing to do with the issue of theft.
Where were you when the voynix came?
"Of course people are stealing music and movies and whatever else all over the place. P2P, bittorrent, whatever."
Since it is technically impossible (the systems copy files), you will be hard pressed to name ONE instance of any stealing ever done of music, movies, or ANY other files using p2p, bittorent, gnutella, LimeWire, old Napster, or anything like that. Better check on what words mean before you come back on this one. It's not splitting hairs: there are fundamental differences in definitions being ignored by you.
Where were you when the voynix came?
We're so totally going to buy the advertised album, like, at a music store, and ask permission from our mommy before buying CDs with unholy language. We want to give out our money and contribute to glorious corporate whores like Jay-Z who have been left alive too long, and help their monopolies, that way 1% of the population can continue controlling 99% of the world's money like God intended.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
It's not mere semantics. This involves fundamental differences in word meaning. No, I do not know "damn well what is meant", since what you are claiming has nothing to do with what is going on.
"If you take something without paying for it...."
Of course. However, remember, "apples and oranges". Duplication of files does not meet the definition of taking. You are quite "delusional" if you have such a poor knowledge of what words mean.
"....then you are stealing it. No amount of rationalizing can dispute that fact."
Next time, why not mention something which is actually stealing? The aura of real applicability might be refreshing.
Now, take the challenge. Show me one instance of theft that ever occured using p2p.
Where were you when the voynix came?