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.'"

Comments

Re:The active music audience

[twostar]

but the RIAA is going to claim they buy more music because of the ads they're decoying out now.

Stealing has never happened via p2p

[krell]

"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...".

Monetized = legit?

[Potor]

If they claim this audience can be monetized, how can they consider it to be non-legit?

Re:If p2p files came with this advertising,

[h4rm0ny]

Pay. Absolutely, I prefer a pay model. Advertising supported media is an ever declining standard. It starts with a little advertising. It increases until people start turning off. Which means they clutch at more advertising to keep the revenues up. The only thing that keeps standards high ultimately, is a customer base that is willing to pay for the content.

Besides, an advertising supported model is incompatible with owning your music, film, whatever. Afterall, no one will make money by selling you a song that eternally has the same ad for Nike's latest running shoes at the beginning of it year after year. The advertising model only works in a setup where you are fed your media content. And of course there are economic pressures against offering you too much choice. We're going to have to fight hard enough against licensing model media purchases (i.e. You've paid for six months of this song) now that the technology for it is available. Part of that fight will be rejecting models like advertising funded media which tie into it.

Not quite.

[Kadin2048]

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.