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.
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."
"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?
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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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."