We recently ran a story about American Express advertising on Filestube, the site that infringes my copyrights while suggesting porno links next to my brand. The American Express ad was served by Google’s DoubleClick ad network presumably at the behest of Ogilvy & Mather.
Yesterday a Google spokesperson told us that they had disabled “self serve” advertising for this site. We weren’t really sure if that meant no more DoubleClick on FilesTube, or if it was some kind of semantic dodge. We’ve had a bunch of those dodging semantics on this issue. However we monitored FilesTube yesterday and we see no sign of DoubleClick. We applaud Google for taking this action!
Now not to look a gift horse in the mouth but we’d love to see Google disable advertising for all those sites that they know are infringing copyright. The ones they mentioned in this handy press release. See it seems a little disingenuous to lower these sites rankings but at the same time to continue doing advertising business with them? (And yes we are already monitoring advertising on these sites!!)
American Express is another matter. We have not heard back from American Express. We’d love to hear what American Express has to say about their company helping to finance copyright infringement–not just mine, but all of the artists. We’d love to know how that happened and if they intend to continue advertising on these sites. Cause it doesn’t seem like a very good idea for an iconic American Brand.
Now I’ve lost my handy pocket version of the RICO statute. People are always borrowing it! But I’m almost certain that it says something about making plans to profit from copyright infringement as a RICO “predicate”. I’m no lawyer but if I were a big company like American Express I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near a website that even had the potential to get wrapped up in a RICO investigation. Especially one based in Moldova.
Today FilesTube looks like a wasteland of QuiBid ads, MacKeeper popups and click shoot ads. Pretty low grade. Seems like it’s not just American Express which got the memo.
Toyota however did not get the memo! So now it’s Toyota’s turn to answer the question? Why are you advertising on this site?
The Trichordist 
Hey Trichordist,
I must applaude your efforts once again, and thanks for rallying us and keeping us up to date in this unfolding drama:-) I know, it may not seem like one to many, but it would someday : Someone in the near future trying to find new music from anybody, and all they can find is ‘classics’, because no one seriously pursues the creative arts anymore…yeah, that sounds pretty distopian. Anyway, thanks again!
Just as an FYI, most large advertisers never see lists of all the sites they might be on as part of an ad network buy. Chances are you may have looked for a car (or something related), and the ad network served you a Toyota ad.
The awareness of this issue does need to be made to those advertisers so they can tell their media agency to keep them off these sites. I’ll be telling our media agency that the next time they present a network buy.
This statement is correct: “we’d love to see Google disable advertising for all those sites that they know are infringing copyright.” and is the right solution.
Keep chipping away. It warms my heart to see people take action. Yesterday I called American Express and let them know as a cardholder I wasn’t very happy about their advertising practices. As a Toyota customer I will be doing the same. Don’t let the pirates grind you down.