Slashdot Mirror
How Major Film Studios Manipulate YouTube Users
An anonymous reader writes "A year before the major movie companies were offered the chance by YouTube to 'block, monetize or track' uploaded copyrighted material, studios such as Disney were already commissioning PR companies to create bogus YouTube users — complete with authentically 'trendy' semi-literate user-profiles, on accounts that appeared to be set up by young and 'edgy' teenagers. These faux 'users' were able to post high-definition videos from copyrighted movies without being penalised or impeded by YouTube's Content ID algorithms, and their posts, deliberately crammed with piracy-related search terms and timed (even to the day, in one case) to coincide with related DVD and Blu-ray releases, sometimes accrue a million and a half hits or more, whilst those of genuine YouTube uploaders fall at the site's Content ID firewall. This article looks at how the major studios have reacted to YouTube in the last four years, and also examines in-depth three such examples of apparent 'astroturfing' involving the theatrical or disc releases of Toy Story 2, Speed Racer and Spider-Man 3."
Go to court?
Hire goons?
Shut down Youtube with DOS attacks?
They have a multi-billion dollar investment in their industry. You can hate their movies if you like. You can despise the prices of popcorn. You can't deny they have an interest in being sure that their investment pays off.
As far as actions go, it's less annoying than rick-rolling.
That if you advertise or support a company, and are paid for by the company - you had to declare it?
This is an honest question...
If you post good videos, they're still good regardless of who you are, your agenda, or if everything in your profile is made up. I don't see how they're manipulating anyone.
Why would anyone look on YouTube for high-quality videos?
They are looking in the wrong place.
Not that I'm a big supporter of copyright, but it's IMHO entirely logical: the studios do it (via hired astroturfers) with *their own* content. You are free to upload hi-def content as long as it's yours, so no hypocrisy here.
Yes its logical and legal but it should also be marked as an advertisement.
The hypocrisy part only comes in when we consider the fact that the very same groups of MPAA and friends were(during the same time period) crying bitterly to anybody who would listen about how youtube was one of the four horsemen of the piratepocalypse, and(DMCA compliance to the contrary) an illegal hive of scum and villainy. I believe that there were even a number of cases where a given studio's legal arm ended up DMCA-takedowning the material that the same studio's PR arm was putting up, and then accusing youtube of a sinister role in contributory infringement...
How breakfast cereal companies manipulate breakfast cereal eaters with hip characters in commercials during kids' TV shows.
.sig
It's hypocritical for at least two reasons:
1. The movie companies claim to lose money on piracy, despite their revenues continuing to increase steadily throughout most of the 2000's, and despite research showing that pirating often stimulates sales. And now it turns out they were using the marketing effect of piracy themselves - that it was "pretend" piracy doesn't make a difference to its marketing effect.
2. By pretending to pirate movies, they set a bad example and encouraged the behaviour they claim to be against, and even brand as immoral in their anti-piracy propaganda.
I believe that there were even a number of cases where a given studio's legal arm ended up DMCA-takedowning the material that the same studio's PR arm was putting up, and then accusing youtube of a sinister role in contributory infringement...
Yes that came out recently as a result of the YouTube vs Viacom (ongoing?) court case.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
If it's being funded or run by the product owner or retailer then it should be. It's an easy way to fraudulently pass a product marketing off as an unbiased community review.
The content is not the problem , the fake users who write positive comments are : it can give the impression that something is a lot better than it actually is.
Offcourse, on Youtube they have to go to the trouble of creating new accounts. Here , they could just post as an AC , and no one would notice.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Actually, I would argue that those studies are exactly why the film industry hates piracy.
Look at it like this: they're a business. Businesses want a steady revenue stream. Ideally, entertainment becomes a machine - 1x money goes in one end, and 1.5x money comes out the other end, no matter what. If sometimes, unpredictably, when you put 1x money in 1.1x money comes out, that's bad - but so is putting 1x money in and getting 2x money out. Unpredictability in general is bad, even if it ends up working out in your favor.
How do businesses combat unpredictability? With marketing. By molding how people perceive your product, you tune the machine; yes, you make its output higher, but you also make the output range narrower - you remove the unpredictability from the market. I bet that one of marketing's greatest victories in the modern era has been to convince people that its goal is simply to improve sales at any cost, not to stabilize them.
This is clearly very important to almost every business, but especially entertainment. I mean, just look at the budget for any major game or movie - there's quite frequently an even split in resources allocated to making the thing and advertising the thing - which, to a business, means that they think advertising is at least as important as the actual product.
So where does piracy come in? It's the equivalent of millions of dollars spent on marketing, that the business has absolutely no control over. That makes type-A CEOs flip out - not because they're losing sales, but because, in essence, they've lost control of something. And they have good reason to, a lot of the time - instead of consumers being hit with a carefully crafted marketing message that frames the product in exactly the right way, they're just exposed directly to the product itself. Remember that budget allocation? Piracy literally makes half of what the company spent on bringing the product to market useless.
So yeah. Those studies that say piracy might actually increase sales? Businesses don't give a shit. What they care about is the unauthorized marketing, which adds unpredictability to their income and makes a large part of the resources they spend meaningless.
I guess every film trailer has accurately reflected the film it's advertising,perhaps not. I'd rather hear from people who saw the film and are enthusiastic about it because it really is a good film. No film studio is ever going to admit its made a stinker of a film or that the second or third sequel of a successful initial film just ran out of plot.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
That's the way it goes. Same with record companies releasing music out on the torrents to gather interest. Come to think of it, games and print are the only entertainment mediums I can think of that don't commonly use this tactic.
Too bad the studios and record companies don't realize that they lose something with these tactics: consumer's respect.
When a game studio or print publisher goes belly up, we feel bad for the people working in those businesses. We think of all the hard work and often times, little pay and appreciation they get back. On the other side of the aisle, the movie and music industry can run ads 24/7 showing the sound engineers and stunt men and their families and thanks to the industry's notoriously underhanded ethics, you can only think, "Man, what a manipulative group of assholes."
Another winning comment by kdemetter! +1000!!!
If you don't want people doing this, don't do it yourself.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
The problem is this entire thing is them pretending that people are doing exactly that. You can't claim you don't want people doing something and then secretly pay people to do (at least what is purposefully designed to LOOK like) exactly that. It's like the police claiming they don't want people jaywalking and then constantly paying people to jaywalk all the time all over the place.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."