Record Labels Turn Piracy Into a Marketing Opportunity

RECORD LABELS TURN PIRACY INTO MARKETING OPPORTUNITY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Julia Angwin, Sarah McBride and Ethan Smith]
There's a new tack being taken by the music industry to deal with the challenge posed by widespread music piracy. For years, the industry has been suing individual downloaders and file-sharing services, hoping to discourage the practice. In a tactic little known outside the music industry, record labels have also started to hire outside companies to plant "decoy," or fake, files on the sites. (One such company, ArtistDirect's MediaDefender, says it has deployed decoys for as many as 30 of the top 100 Billboard songs at any given time.) The decoy files frustrate users because they fail to download even though, thanks to the companies' technical expertise, they often claim the top spot in search results for a tune. But now there's a growing recognition among some record executives and performers that the people who are downloading illegally are frequently huge music fans and that marketing to them may be more desirable in the long run than suing or otherwise harassing them. By inserting promotional material into the decoy files, and then planting those files prominently on file-sharing sites, record labels and other marketers can turn what is now an antipiracy tool into an advertising medium.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116113611429796022.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace
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See also --

* Music Companies Sue 8,000 More in Anti-Sharing Fight
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101701289.html

* Universal Sues Video Sharing Websites
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-universal18oct18,1,5412267.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business