Category: Ad Sponsored Piracy

Well this is Embarrassing, a Tunecore Ad on 4Shared…

When doing random searches on illegal and infringing sites, you never know whose ads might pop up… Artists pay Tunecore to distribute their albums and music on paid platforms, and Tunecore pay’s pirate site 4Shared to give the artists music away for free…

MellencampTUNECORE

Read John Mellencamp’s excellent editorial on The Huffington Post,

Why is thievery allowed to continue on the Internet? And why do people think it’s so impossible to correct? Right after radio was invented, they played music and sold advertising. Then it dawned on some: “Hey, they’re playing our music, and they’re selling advertising on our backs; we should get paid.” So performing rights organizations like ASCAP and BMI were established with the express intention of protecting the intellectual property of artists who create it.

by trichordist

First USC-Annenberg Brand Supported Piracy Report and Google Response

Professor Jonathan Taplin of the USC-Annenberg Innovation Lab released the first monthly report on brand supported piracy that demonstrates how major brands make pirates rich (not to mention the ad networks that take a cut–or some might say a vigorish–along the way.

[The USC Annenberg Lab Advertising Transparency Report details] the Online Ad Networks support of the major pirate movie and music sites around the world. The top ten ad networks placing the most ads to Pirate sites are:

  1. Openx
  2. Google (including Double Click)
  3. Exoclick
  4. Sumotorrent
  5. Propellerads
  6. Yahoo (including Right Media)
  7. Quantcast
  8. Media Shakers
  9. Yesads
  10. Infolinks

The list of top infringing sites was compiled using the Google Transparency Report (http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/domains/?r=last-month) of domains with the most DMCA Takedown requests.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Levi’s is one brand that responded immediately:

Jeans maker Levi’s took swift action when Taplin presented evidence that the clothing company’s ads had appeared on file-sharing sites.

“When our ads were running unbeknownst to us on these pirate sites, we had a serious problem with that,” said Gareth Hornberger, senior manager of global digital marketing for Levi’s. “We reached out to our global ad agency of record, OMD, and immediately had them remove them…. We made a point, moving forward, that we really need to take steps to avoid having these problems again.”

Google, of course, had a carefully parsed response to the Times:

“To the extent [the study] suggests that Google ads are a major source of funds for major pirate sites, we believe it is mistaken,” a Google spokesperson said. “Over the past several years, we’ve taken a leadership role in this fight. The complexity of online advertising has led some to conclude, incorrectly, that the mere presence of any Google code on a site means financial support from Google.” (emphasis added)

Right.  Of course, this may well be a true statement–except the issue isn’t only about “Google ads”, that is, ads for Google products like this ad for Google Play on a pirate lyric site.

google ads sponsored links 2

And even if they meant any ad served by Google for any product, what if Google ads are a minor source of funds for major pirate sites?  Or are a major source of funds for minor pirate sites?

And what if the “mere presence of Google code” includes the Google ad publisher account number for the pirate?  Does that still count as “mere”?

Isn’t this called a nondenial denial?

Lyrics007 Google Ads Code 1

by thetrichordist

Billy Corgan Exploited By… Citi Bank, AT&T, Target, Virgin Atlantic, Mazda, Neiman Marcus, Musicians Friend, Hertz, BMW, Audi, Boston Market, Urban Outfitters, Williams Sonoma

At SXSW in 2012 Billy Corgan shared his thoughts about the music business from his perspective, including his thoughts that you can’t really make money in the music business anymore. Billy is probably right that musicians can’t really make money in the music business anymore, but it appears there is plenty of money being made by internet sites dedicated to infringement as well as the ad networks and payment processors who allow the sites to profit from the musicians work.

Surely these advertisements are not appearing without being paid for, and there actually is money is being paid to finance and support the operation of major piracy sites (as reported by Google’s own transparency report). What’s worse is that the money financing these major piracy sites ripping off artists and creators are being paid by well know major consumer brands and corporations. See below…

Citi Bank – 4Shared
AT&T – 4Shared
AT&T – Mp3Skull
Target – Mp3Skull
Virgin Atlantic – IsoHunt
Mazda – Mp3Raid
Neiman Marcus – Mp3Skull
Hyundai – Mp3Skull
Musicians Friend – 4Shared
Hertz Rent A Car – 4Shared
BMW – 4Shared
Audi – Mp3Skull
Boston Market – 4Shared
Urban Outfitters – 4Shared
Williams Sonoma – IsoHunt

SP_4sharedAudioCitiATT

SP_ATTTargetMP3Skull

SP_ishunt_VirginAtlantic

SP_mazdapumpkinsmp3raid

SP_mp3skullHyndai

SP_MusiciansHertsBMW

SP_pumpkinsAudioMp3Skull

SP_UrbanOutFitters4Shared

SP_WilliamsSonomaIsoHunt

by trichordist

Google’s Serial Obfuscation: Music Canada,BPI, Billboard Question Whether Google Has Really Lowered Pirate Sites Search Rankings

Back in August Google announce it would push down search rankings for pirate sites.  This was greeted with a lot of hoopla by both opponents and proponents of illegal piracy.  But it now appears that this announcement was just newspeak from the GOOrwell Ministry of Truth.

Graham Henderson at Music Canada has just posted an article that puts Google’s claims into question.   In the article Still Searching for Results in Google’s Wasteland of Illegal Sites and Takedown Notices  Henderson details the emptiness of Google’s claims.  A search for Carly Rae Jespersen’s Call Me Maybe  results in zero legitimate music sites on the first page.  The lone exception is the Google owned YouTube.  It’s not till the second page of results that  the 800lb gorilla of the digital retail, iTunes shows up!   Not only does this illustrate the difficulties facing artists it illustrates how tough it is for the legitimate music tech companies to reach their customers.  It’s odd that the myopic music tech companies like Pandora still seem to think it’s the artists that are the enemy.  They refuse to acknowledge that Google is eating their lunch.

It get’s even worse.  We looked at every single link on the first page of search results for “Call Me Maybe Download”.  Google has no incentive to push these infringing links down.   Every link except one apparently generates revenue for Google!!   How?  either directly through Youtube,  by (illegally?) selling advertising on the site hosting the infringing links, or using one of googles many other tools to generate revenue.   We give you the evidence here:

Here is the first page of search results.

Clicking through to the links reveals Google’s DoubleClick serving advertising directly on each these sites or evidence that they have in the past. 5 of these links definitely generate revenue for Google.  Two other  links resulted in queries to Google for ads  but in this case didn’t directly receive ads.  The last two use other google tools to generate revenue    Just like the online pharmacy case Google is complicit in what appears to be illegal activity.  Maybe now the election is over the Obama administration will pursue this.

BeeMP3’s ad traffic has been decimated of late, but google is still selling their android app.

by Dr. David C Lowery

Madison Avenue and Media Piracy, Are Online Ad Networks the Birth of SkyNet?

In the mythology of the Terminator Sci-Fi movies it is a military defense computer system (SkyNet) that achieves consciousness through artificial intelligence and declares war on human beings. In reality, it appears the first computer networks to declare war on us may be advertising networks, ad bots, and online AI advertising auctions.

If one is to believe the various people responsible for the millions (er, uhm billions) of dollars flowing through online advertising networks (Google alone is estimated to be $30b annually) you could easily believe the machines have already achieved consciousness as no human being we speak to seems to have an actual understanding of how online advertising networks function.

It all appears to be a mystery as to how the money changes hands down stream, and how to determine who is getting paid from what specific ad placements and on what specific sites.  We had one ad network executive tell us privately “we can not control where the ads end up”.

Really?  So the online ad networks are Skynet?

This would seem to an alarming problem for buyers of advertising including such respected brands as Wendy’s, Yahoo, BMW, Adobe, Cadillac, LG, Target, Westin Hotels, Priceline, Hyatt Hotels, Weight Watchers, VISA, State Farm, Mini Cooper, ADT Security and even Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.

It would probably be pretty embarrassing for a multinational electronics company like LG and a Presidential Candidate to both be advertising on two of the Top 20 most infringing sites in the world, wouldn’t it? Uh oh, don’t look now…

If the machines are already in control we should probably be worried, but we do think it’s odd they would be so focused on a capacity that only seems to transfer wealth from artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors and other creators to internet millionaires running ad networks and pirate sites.

Certainly if Google and the other ad networks had knowledge of the top infringing sites say through a publicly accessible transparency report based on DMCA notices, they would not be serving ads to those businesses operating far beyond the intention of the law? Certainly if they knew that just the Top 20 infringing sites had over 2.3 Million claims in just one month, than Google and the other advertising networks would clearly make a best practices “no fly zone” for advertising on those sites, wouldn’t they?

We’d much rather see this advertising revenue directed towards legally operating and legitimate media outlets such as television, newspapers and magazines who no doubt are also in need of revenue in an ever competitive marketplace. Why finance the pirates who are illegally exploiting others in the creative industries? How much money is being lost from legitimate media outlets to media pirates?

Below is a random sampling of artists exploited by these Madison Avenue Brands and the sites hosting the advertising. We wonder who is serving these ads, and paying these sites because everyone we talk to denies advertising on these sites and seems to know nothing about it.

TOM WAITS Exploited By Wendy’s, Yahoo, BMW, Mitt Romney, Adobe, Cadillac, LG, Target, Westin Hotels, Priceline, Hyatt Hotels, Weight Watchers, VISA, State Farm, Mini Cooper, ADT Security

* BMW on Kick Ass Torrents
* Mitt Romney, ADT Security on 4Shared
* Adobe, Mini Cooper on FilesTube
* Cadillac on FilesTube
* LG on FilesTube
* Target on Mp3Crank
* VISA, State Farm on Mp3 Crank
* Wendy’s on Kick Ass Torrents
* Westin on Kick Ass Torrents
* Priceline, Weight Watchers on 4Shared
* Hyatt on 4Shared
* Weight Watchers, Hilton on 4Shared
* Yahoo on Dilandau
* Urban Outfitters on FilesTube

U2 Exploited by United Airlines, Jet Blue, HP, State Farm, Westin, Urban Outfitters, Sprint, AT&T, Amazon, Disney Resorts, Crate and Barrel

* United Airlines x2 on h33t
* United Airlines on mp3 bear
* United Airlines on FilesTube
* Jet Blue and Kayak on h33t
* Hewlett Packard and State Farm on mp3skull
* Westin Hotels on 4shared
* Westin Hotels on mp3raid
* Urban Outfitters on mp3skull
* Sheraton Hotels on mp3skull
* Century 21 on 4shared
* Alaska Airlines on torrent reactor
* State Farm on torrent reactor
* Sprint on torrrent reactor
* Sheraton Hotels on 4shared
* Hewlett Packard x2 on filestube
* Hewlett Packard and State Farm on mp3skull
* Hewlett Packard on h33t
* Rejuvenation on filestube
* Disney Resorts on torrent reactor
* Crate & Barrel on Files Tube
* Charter Cable on mp3 raid
* AT&T on mp3skull
* Amazon on 4shared

These two examples above are just the tip of the iceberg, and it’s not just the most well known and respected mainstream artists who are effected. Perhaps even more so it is the smaller artists who have been the most hard hit by this diversion of revenue without compensation Aimee Mann, Neko Case, Talib Kweli, Death Cab For Cutie and Jared Leto to name a few.

It would also appear that Google makes plenty of money serving ads on sites that it knows are infringing. Here is Google’s Doubleclick serving an ad for Jeep on http://www.dilandau.eu   This is a site that Google’s own transparency report ranks as the 24th most copyright infringing site in the world.  Isn’t knowingly providing money to an illegal enterprise a RICO predicate?

One would think with this kind of information there would be a move to improve the situation for rights holders, but looking at this graph it appears to be getting worse, much worse.

The bottom line is, we wonder how such mass scale, enterprise level and generally sketchy businesses can continue to go unchecked without any reporting from the mainstream media (who also depend on ad dollars that are now going to competing businesses engaged in media piracy and mass scale copyright infringement).

Once upon a time no one thought twice about “accounting irregularities” at Enron and we all know how that story ended. So who’s gonna ask the hard questions and get some real answers? Operators are standing by…

by trichordist

Mellencamp Character Assassination. The New Republic Bravely Stands Up For Corporations and Criminal Groups That Exploit Artists.

I’m sort of delighted by this. I mean I went to a very liberal college and there’s a certain kind elitist and dim knee jerk liberal I really dislike.  Dorm room revolutionaries who end up unwittingly doing the work of the man.  The kind that end up blogging for The New Republic.

Recently John Cougar Mellancamp wrote a piece in which he criticized the music business.  In particular he criticized them and his fellow artists  for not standing up to  large corporations like Google who have monetized illegal file-sharing by selling advertising against illegal download search results and also by providing advertising directly to file infringing sites.

The New Republic-always the class act-decided to respond with a character assassination piece.   They sent the remarkably ignorant Lydia DePillis (on twitter @lydiadepillis)  a 3 year real estate journalism veteran to “School” the 40 year music business veteran John  Mellencamp on the history and future of the music business.  It’s freaking hilarious.  Not only does this “professional” journalist not understand that  the main point is that Mellencamp is criticizing the music business for not protecting artists she wanders completely off topic and makes historical claims that have no basis in fact. Further she incorrectly disputes Mellencamp’s facts.

I’m just gonna give you one example.  The 3 year journalism veteran claims that search engines don’t make money off the searches for illegal downloads.   it took exactly 3.2 seconds for me to disprove this…

That is Google advertising against a set of infringing links.

Also she then dismisses and mocks Mellencamp’s correct claim that Google makes plenty of money serving ads on sites that it knows are infringing.

Here is Google’s Doubleclick serving an ad for Jeep on the that same site http://www.dilandau.eu   A site that Google’s own transparency report ranks as the 24th most copyright infringing site in the world.  Isn’t knowingly providing money to an illegal enterprise a RICO predicate?

It is sad but not surprising to see The New Republic standing up for the right of giant corporations and criminal groups to make money by exploiting artists songs.  The New Republic has totally lost it’s way.  They are now for the big corporations and against the little guy.

If The New Republic has any journalistic integrity left it  needs to correct the falsehoods in this article.  Further they should apologize to Mellencamp for the nasty tone of this article.  I’m sure they won’t but it’s worth a try.   Maybe tweeting at the author will work better @lydiadepillis .

by Dr. David C Lowery

UPDATE : Pittsburg Post-Gazette Published Piracy Link

See what happens when you call people out on their foolishness?  Things get fixed.

On wednesday we called out The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and their TV critic Rob Owens for instructing readers in how to get bootleg DVDs from an illegal website in Kuala Lumpur ,Malaysia.

As a result they took action.  They removed the offending link and the copyright theft inducing language.

While we applaud the Post-Gazette for taking this action.  It would be super extra nice if they alerted and apologized to their readers for sending them to a site  that appears to be co-located  with various scam and terror sites.  Hopefully none  of the Post-Gazette’s readers  gave this site their credit card numbers or personal information.

And  thank you to our readers who alerted us to this story.  Here is the link to the original post:

https://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/pittsburg-post-gazette-tv-critic-instructs-readers-in-how-to-get-pirated-copies-of-dvds-oh-and-fund-terrorism/

And then we got this nice letter from Kate Parry Assistant Managing Editor/Special Projects and Features Star Tribune Minneapolis. They also ran this story because they syndicate Owen’s column.

Dear Mr. Lowery,
Thank you very much for taking the time to contact us about the reference in the Rob Owen tv column to the piracy website. Mike Klingensmith forwarded your email. We’ve removed that paragraph from the column. Owen is a writer for the newspaper in Pittsburgh and his column comes to us through a syndication service and feeds into the website. We’ll keep an eye on his columns in the future to see if any other references show up. I’d welcome you to contact us any time you see something that appears to be amiss on our website.

Sincerely,

Kate Parry
Assistant Managing Editor/Special Projects and Features
Star Tribune
Minneapolis

by trichordist

Amex must really like advertising on #1 copyright infringing and illegal porn linking site Filestube

<<<Editors note.  This story is from Aug 30th,  we didn’t run it because we expected to hear something from American Express after the initial story.  We never did.  Maybe this time we will get an explanation from American Express.>>>

Aug 30th.

A couple of weeks ago the Trichordist along with http://www.Adland.tv  caused a little bit of a fuss by showing Amex was advertising on the #1 copyright infringing site http://www.filestube.com. They were giving money to the shysters ripping off my music.

As shitty as that is, we know that most of brouhaha  had nothing to do with Amex getting caught advertising on yet another file-sharing site. No, http://www.filestube.com is not just any disreputable copyright infringing site. It goes a step farther. It likes  to promote it’s “recently watched videos” on virtually every page and A LOT of the time these “recently watched videos” appear to be  illegal pornography.   So you have an iconic American brand like AMEX sitting right next to some pretty disgusting links.  (Screenshots were provided.)

Our post seemed to generate a good reaction.  Indeed, it appears the mother of all ad networks DoubleClick stopped advertising on the site, at least as far as we can see into the labyrinth of ad networks.

We tweeted out our post and follow up to @AmericanExpress and notified their ad agency. We figured that was the last we’d see of American Express on that site.

We were wrong.  Apparently someone working for or on behalf of American Express  must really like advertising on this site, cause they are still advertising there. If DoubleClick stopped serving ads  at filestube.com did Amex switch to a different company that serves ads at fielstube!!? WTF?

Now I’m not an advertising expert  maybe people who don’t want to pay for music AND watch bestiality videos are American Express’s ideal target audience.  But it doesn’t seem likely and…

How stupid do you have to be to get caught doing this twice?

More amusement follows if you look at the website for the company that served the AMEX ad the second time:

Drive results with Sojern

With greater scrutiny than ever on advertising strategies, budgets and results, Sojern is the powerful partner you need to reach premium audiences in ways that no one else can.

  • Exclusive audiences – Sojern reaches the most desirable demographic groups: with higher incomes, more frequent travel for business and leisure, more income to spend – and a greater inclination to do so.

Pure comedy gold. Or out and out fraud.  I don’t see how whoever is doing this to American Express could keep their job.  We wrote Sojern to alert them of this situation and try to get a comment for this article but as of this morning we have heard nothing from them.  I dunno maybe you can get them to comment:

http://www.sojern.com/contact_us/pr-media

Also Ogilvy and Mather appears to be the ad agency for American Express.  Perhaps they can explain the rationale behind advertising on this site.

Amex–stop giving money to people in Moldova that exploit my work.  Stop giving money to people who appear to  distribute illegal pornography.  And if you didn’t intend to advertise on this site?  Do your shareholders a favor and demand an audit and rebates from your advertising agency and the advertising networks.

We still haven’t seen Coca Cola, Pepsi or Apple advertising on any of these sites. It can be done.

filestube lyric page with search for camper van beethoven.

by Dr. David C Lowery

Is it The Pirate Party, or The Pirate Lobby?

It’s endlessly fascinating to witness the double standard of the internet companies and pirate communities. The conversation is, was and will always be about money. So much so, that the tech industry has created yet another lobby to prop up it’s interests to exploit artists and creators in the aptly named, Internet Association. This in addition to the record breaking lobby spends by just Google. At least this time the shills are out in the open. Author Scott Cleland posts, The Top False Claims of the New Internet Association to add some balance (and transparency) to the conversation.

Let’s be clear about this, the conversation is not, nor has it ever been about free speech as IP scholar Adam Mosoff writes in The Statesman,

“The right to free speech is the right to express one’s thoughts without censorship by the government. Copyright does not prohibit anyone from creating their own original novels, songs or artworks. Importantly, copyright does not stop people from thinking, talking or writing about copyrighted works.”

by trichordist