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

Therein lies the problem

[Weaselmancer]

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?

Re:Decoy Files on P2P Sites Become Income

[Potatomasher]

Pffff ! A boat's a boat. But the mystery box ... It could be anything, even a boat !