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

Decoy Files on P2P Sites Become Income

[eldavojohn]

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.

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/warrantapplic ation.html) and there it was, a registration form for a free boat!

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 ... 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.

People on the internet are so stupid sometimes.

Re:Decoy Files on P2P Sites Become Income

[flonker]

It seems to me that by putting the files up, they are giving permission to distribute them. Hence, no copyright infringement occurs.

The active music audience

[ben there...]

'While peer-to-peer users are stealing the intellectual property, they are also the active music audience,'

So they admit that filesharers are the active music audience.

They're one step away from admitting filesharers buy more music.

Re:The active music audience

[Captain Splendid]

I know, the disconnect is ridiculous:

"Damn kids, downloading all these music videos."
"We can hire a company to seed decoy files."
"I have a better idea, instead of wasting that file with garbage, we could always put some ads in it."
"Like what?"
"Hmmm, how about music videos of our artists!"
"Outstanding! Here, have another line of coke..."

Re:The active music audience

[bugnuts]

And pretty soon, RIAA will start suing p2p indexing sites for caving and shutting down the index servers, claiming it cost RIAA advertising revenue.

That's what Google said

[rbf2000]

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.

Legal blunder?

[SeanBaker]

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.

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...".

Mystery box

[Anonymous Coward]

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!