Is Amazon a pirate DVD sponsor?
p2pnet news | P2P:- Is Amazon a pirate DVD sponsor, as well as being sponsored by a pirate DVD company?
Amazon owns A9 which offers ads using the Clickriver ad program.
According to Amazon:
The sponsored links are provided by Clickriver Ads and by other 3rd party ad networks. Clickriver Ads is an advertising program – currently in beta – that allows businesses to advertise services and products that complement the selection on Amazon.com. Clickriver is offered by A9.com, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com.
While researching on Amazon to find out when the next series of “All In The Family” is released on DVD (currently only series 1-6 have been officially released), I saw an ad at the bottom of the page in their “Sponsored Links” section.
It reads:
All in The Family on DVD
www.ultimatedvdshop.com Seasons 1-9 All 210 episodes 15 DVDS.
The DVD specs on Ultimatedvdshop are:All in The Family
Seasons 1-9
All 210 episodes
15 DVDS
DVD SPECS
Video Format: Normal Screen
Special Features: None
Menu’s Yes (Interactive Menu for quick and easy episode selection)
Commercials: None
Language Tracks: English
Subtitle Tracks: None
Rating: Not Rated
Product Packaging: Standard DVD Cases with
Professional, Full Color Artwork
Region Code: 0 (Region-Free – Plays Worldwide)
DVD Format: Format-Free DVD-R (Plays in both
PAL and NTSC DVD players)
The specs on Amazon are:
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Region 1 encoding (US and Canada only)
PLEASE NOTE: Some Region 1 DVDs may contain Regional Coding Enhancement (RCE). Some, but not all, of our international customers have had problems playing these enhanced discs on what are called “region-free” DVD players.
Amazon has no dates slated for when series 7 and 8 will be released, and no mention of series 9 at all.
The Sony Pictures (the official copyright holder) online shop only has listings for series 1-6 and no mention at all of series 7-9.
I sent this message today to ultimatedvdshop:
Hello.
I found your website on Amazon.
I’d like to know how it is you can sell dvd’s which haven’t yet been released. For example, I’m interested in your “All In The Family” complete series 1-9 box set, but according to Amazon, only series 1-6 have been officially released. I own series 1-6 and they aren’t region code free, but you offer yours code free.
How is that possible?
Please respond asap.
Thank you.
*****
Amazon earns revenue from apparent pirate DVD shops and owns the ad company (A9) which sells ads promoting apparent illegal pirate dvds.
By selling the ads and running them on their website, Amazon fully acknowledges what the client sells and authorizes direct links to the pirate DVD shop.
Essentially, IMHO, Amazon promotes the sale of illegal pirate DVDs, collecting ad revenue from the pirates.
Stay tuned.
catflap – p2pnet
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December 13th, 2007 at 9:32 am
CONFIRMED
Just for the heck of it, I did a Google search for Amazon and the name of my father (Amazon “Guillermo Venegas”). I found a CD being sold with 12 songs owned by my family, on Amazon;s US and German pages. The artist/singer on the CD is also my father.
See here:
http://www.amazon.com/Guillermo-Venegas-Mi-Caba%C3%B1a-Quebradillas/dp/B000056MXA
We have never issued a license for such a CD even though the CD has been widely sold under various names at many web pages and we have never received any performer or song royalties for this recording.
Interestingly, Amazon, as all music CD dealers on the web gives no mailing address so that a cease and desist order can be sent.
Amazon, should check the stuff they sell or the integrity of their suppliers.
December 13th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Corporate Office
1516 2nd Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
Principal Executive Office
1200 12TH AVENUE SOUTH
SUITE 1200
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON 98144
December 13th, 2007 at 11:37 am
i just checked amazon again and the ad is still running.
i found it on this link moments ago – 18.30 CET:
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=
blended&link%5Fcode=qs&field-keywords=all%20in%20the
%20family&sourceid=Mozilla-search
because their sponsored links seem to be randomly
generated, here is what the ad looks like on the amazon website:
http://hidebehind.com/36BFC8
December 16th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
OMG. Why is this even news? Of any sort?
That there is a link to some shady item on a website? 0h n0es! Say it ain’t so, Joe!
Amazon’s own “stores” have always been full of Region-0 bootlegs, especially in the Anime department. That there is a link to some company selling unlicensed DVDs is no different than a search engine linking to a site where you can download a torrent so you can get copies of a show that isn’t on DVD yet. It hard to police something like that (without physical product in hand) and it’s even harder to police a link that probably was never even looked at by anyone except some drone before it got dumped into rotation.
Kwitcherbitchin. If you don’t like it, don’t use it. Don’t say you “download things from P2P networks to sample what you want” and then complain when someone else is selling that same downloaded material.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Gah. I no for make myself clear…
It’s hard to police (Amazon’s) “stores” without the physical product in hand, as compared to some link. My bad.
December 16th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
the actual topic of my article is how companies like amazon promote (apparently) pirated dvds and earn revenue from the sale of these (apparently) pirated goods.
it has nothing to do with p2p.