Slashdot Mirror
The Porn - MP3 Connection
quadra writes "New Musical Express has a strange
article based on a report by the British Phonographic Industry. According to them, sites are using MP3s in order to 'force' users to watch porn. " For those who aren't familar, the BPI is the British-equivalent of the RIAA [?] . Wow. I can't even imagine the thought process that leads people to say things like that.
If this appeals to you, come join my crusade against magazine articles. After all, all these people are getting sucked into looking at naked women after being lured to Playboy for the articles! Damn that sly Hue Heffner!
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
To get into my site, use the Username "w4r3z". To get the password, go to http://blah.blah/blah and click on the banners. The password is the third word on the first banner page plus the fifth word on the second banner page. Naturally, 90% of the banners are porn banners...
Is this what they really meant?
--
Rob, you're forcing me to login. You're forcing me to read those advertisements on top of your page. I'm not responsible - society has forced me to spend my hard-earned cash and turned me into a social reject. Now I'm forced into posting to slashdot and hitting reload several dozen times an hour. It's not my fault, I'm a victim of Rob Malda! Help, help! Somebody's forcing me to think independently! It hurts, make them stop!!!
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All I get is music, and maybe some hippie graphics.
I especially liked the part about horrifying teenage sex, what exactly is that? Drinking a six pack, getting queasy, fumbling for a thick, old Trojan in your wallet and then prematurely ejaculating while her mom walks in on you? And then hurling on the floor?
Pretty horrifying to me.
George
To paraphrase the immortal Claud Rains, the recording industry is shocked, shocked to discover that somebody is using sex to sell music.
(the revenues from your music video, sir,)
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
As someone who's seem more than his fair shar of sites which allow... um... "alternative means of software procurement" as well as MP3's, I've seen this. Most sites will not allow you to access them until you've clicked on one or more banners; they do this to make money for the owners. Furthermore, most of the banners are porn. The way that you prove you clicked this link comes in the fact that the password for the server is some word in a specific position on the page. Sometimes you have to use two banners, one to get the login and one to get the password.
Porn sites got wise to this, though. People would click through the banners, get the word they wanted, and leave. This wasn't making the porn vendors happy, so they switched to a new tactic; only giving their referrers money for people whop actually signed up for the service. Because of this now, you actually have to join many porn sites to access certain servers, and come back with information about a "Members Only" page.
I don't know. I'd consider that forcing a user to view porn to get MP3's. You're just as forced to join the sites as many people are to use Windows; let's put it that way.
Luckily, a few people still provide MP3's without banners. But there's some truth, at least, to that statement. Granted, you're not held at gunpoint and forced to relentlessly navigate these sites, but you think you're forced, and that's just as bad.
I can't even imagine the thought process that leads people to say things like that.
Actually, having to click on banner ads before entering MP3 sites is quite common.
Try looking up a popular song on Palavista and see how many of the listed sites let you in immediately. Very often the user name and password required for downloading files are chosen from the text of sites linked through banner ads; so you have to visit the sites (and usually click through to their sign-up page) before logging on. Very often these banners are pornographic, perhaps because such firms are not as picky as to who they permit to advertize them.
In this way illicit MP3 sites finance themselves, since simply displaying a banner ad often generates no banner revenue. Apparently the biggest difficulty in running such a site is trying to avoid 100% click-through ratios, as they tend to attract the attention and suspicion of banner advertizement firms.
Clearly they want to hunt down illegal MP3 sites, and since they can't get people to agree it's a dangerous activity, they're using a bit of collateral damage. It's the same argument being used against, for instance, pot and prostitution. (Disclaimer: I'm not defending nor promoting either, just observing.)
Whereas many people say pot is not bad for your health and not intrinsictly dangerous, the main argument used by the police to crack down on pot is that it leads to other criminal activities. You're smoking pot? Well, you'll probably snort cocaine in the long run. And you're encouraging criminal groups that commit worse crimes because of it.
Never mind that it's a bit of circular logic.
Anyway... It's true. If you're looking for a few "illegal" MP3 and enter "MP3z" in any good search engine, you'll run into sites (sorry, sitez) who also have a lot of warez, and plenty of "passwordz" for porn sites. You'll also get so many sex banners you may as well go blind.
It's really just incidental. What it shows is that people willing to distribute copyrighted MP3s are the same crowd that distribute pr0n passwordz and cracked software. Come on, admit it. I'm not generalising, but on the whole, it happens a lot.
So... We're back to the whole collateral damage argument. It's hard to argue that free music is damaging in itself, so the BPI has to find another easy target. So they latch unto a well-known enemy likely to cause public outrage. Pornography.
And voila. Looking for MP3s makes you see a lot of porn.
Nice FUD, eh?
"Knowledge = Power = Energy = Mass"