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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 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.
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."
Let's sue them for providing you with mislabeled material with the sole intend to defraud. Also entrapment and racketeering (pay us, or bad stuff will happen to you).
Yeah, Yeah, bogus lawsuite clearly, but still better than the average riaa lawsuit.
It seems to me that by putting the files up, they are giving permission to distribute them. Hence, no copyright infringement occurs.
I think that their real fear is what I've noticed happening to me.
I try before I buy, too. I'm just not going to pay 13.99 for a CD with only a single song I like, and good luck finding the single. However, since I began trying before buying, I noticed something... a large majority of the music I listen to does not fall under the RIAA, at least not directly. Oh, I'm sure they all own overseas labels and such, but even so, most of the music I like does not originate in the US. Some of it doesn't even fall under a label, anymore.
That's what scares them. They've worked very hard to turn something creative and personal into a product that they can dictate the terms to. They don't want people to have varied interests that they have to target. They don't want to bother with taking a risk on an artist, or dealing with niche markets. They want people to go to the store and buy music like many people buy margarine... they just settle in on a habit of one particular brand, but in the end, most of it tastes pretty much the same.
The internet allows people to distribute their own unique brand of music and get recognized for it. Since they can't seem to stop this, it would seem they've settled for shoving it in your face and hoping that you'll come to like it. Somehow I doubt that the advertisements for Jay-Z are going to be in false Jay-Z files, but will probably be masquerading as everything else but Jay-Z. I wouldn't even put it past them to name the files based specifically on artists who are not shackled down with a contract.
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
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.
Yeah, that doesn't hold up.
But one thing that's interesting as far as the usual RIAA/MPAA lawsuits is that these "official" decoys are legitimizing the defense that you didn't know what you were getting, and therefore didn't know you were downloading copyrighted files. If the RIAA can easily fool people with decoys, perhaps they (or anyone really) fooled the downloader with other copyrighted files.