The Hypocrisy Weblog

British news agency BBC writes; “Paul Myers, chief executive of Wippit – a peer to peer service (P2P) which provides paid-for music downloads – believes it is time advertisers stopped providing ‘oxygen’ for companies that support illegal downloading.”

Paul Myers said the following in an open letter to the British Phonographic Industry last month (quote); “You may be surprised to know that current advertisers on the most popular peer to peer service eDonkey who now steadfastly support copyright theft with real cash money include Nat West, Vodafone, O2, First Direct, NTL, and Renault,”.

Myers urged people to follow his lead and ‘dump’ brands associated with companies such as eDonkey.

The BPI is equally quick to condemn established brands becoming bedfellows with peer to peer networks.

“Networks like eDonkey, Kazaa and Grokster facilitate illegal filesharing. The BPI strongly believes that any reputable company should look carefully at the support they are giving these networks through their advertising revenue,” BPI said in a statement.

BPI continues; “Illegal file-sharers steal millions of pounds worth of music through these services. We are sure that the companies advertising on them would not put up with theft on such a scale from their own businesses,”.

Mark Mulligan, a music analyst with Jupiter Research airs the opinion that the issue about advertisements on P2P-networks are more complicated for the actual advertisers. The reality of it all is that the millions of downloaders represent a very attractive audience.

Mark Mulligan says; “Advertisers probably pay a lot less for putting ads here than on more respected sites and they are reaching the perfect target audience,”.

“If you put the legality issues aside, not to advertise here would mean missing out on a valuable audience,” Mr Mulligan added.

Meanwhile companies contacted by the BBC News website insist that they were not directly aware of where their ads have been appearing.

OneTel adverts were spotted on eDonkey this week and its response was typical.

“We have investigated this matter and believe that one of our affiliate partners has placed this advert without our knowledge. It is not our policy to advertise through peer-to-peer networks,” read a statement from the discount phone firm.

It has requested the advert be removed immediately, said a spokeswoman.

Similarly telecommunications firm NTL blames its media buying agency which places adverts with third party networks featuring thousands of sites.

Since the matter was brought to its attention last month, the agency has strict instructions to make sure ads do not appear on such sites, a spokesman told the BBC News website.

Presidential peer-to-peer campaign

However Mr Mulligan was not entirely convinced by these explanations.

While smaller brands might not necessarily be aware of where the money they allocate to online advertising actually ends, this is no excuse for well-known brands, he said.

“I would be surprised if these brands didn’t have the know-how to prevent this happening,” he said.

At the moment eDonkey is enjoying the benefits of having some very well-known faces advert on its network.

“Many big brands have leveraged the opportunity, including perhaps two of the biggest brands in the world – Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush,” said chief executive Sam Yagan.

There are some distinct advantages of advertising on such a network, he thinks.

“Peer-to-peer clients offer big brands a unique opportunity to engage with their customers where they’re most comfortable: at their desks interacting with their favourite digital media,” he said.

My comment; The above controversy is typical, as while the music industry (Paul Myers&Wippit along with the BPI) wants to protect their source of revenue, aka the intellectual capital music is, the major public has a whole ‘nother view on the matter; they have grown accustom to music being free and easily accessible, and (too) many see the work musicians do to be something that they shouldn’t really get paid for, and when there is a sense of “the musicians must live out of something”, there is still the “I will download this album, I bet that someone else will buy it”-feel.

What the record-industry fail to accomplish is to reach out to the grey mass, as in a not demographically determined group of people / potential consumers and, no matter how slow, change attitudes in order to finally make paid for and legal digital music&film something of a more common reality. If this is not accomplished, then there is no hope for the music and entertainment industry as a whole.

I know that putting out advertisements on (“non-commercial“) P2P-networks such as eDonkey must be a real thorn in the side to any record / film-company executive, but it has to be done in order to win the battle between legally downloaded intellectual material, and the illegally shared ditto. One can not sue people to submission.

It is time for all the Lukes Skywalkers of BMG&co to join the darkside; there is no other way.

Article at the BBC-website

Tags: PR

Technorati Tags: PR