RIAA victim Jammie Thomas in Kazaa promo
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- I didn’t think it was possible for Sharman Networks, owner of the Kazaa P2P file sharing application that’s front and centre in virtually all of the Big 4 sue ‘em all lawsuits, to sink any lower.
I was wrong.
Sharman, which virtually introduced spyware to the Net, is now shamelessly exploiting RIAA victim Jammie Thomas-Rasset to promote Kazaa.
“Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US) and their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) can be quite properly described as hate organisations,” I wrote in October last year, going on »»»
They hate anything which even looks remotely like competition. They hate independents and independence. They hate anything which interferes with what they see as their God-given right to control how, and by whom, music is distributed online. They even hate the people who keep them in drugs and booze and who pay their bills.
But there’s one commercial outfit that’s central to the vast majority of the RIAA hate lawsuits, but which has nonetheless escaped virtually unscathed: Australia’s Sharman Networks, owner of Kazaa, the P2P file sharing application used by almost every RIAA victim.
Currently, the highest profile Kazaa case centres on Jammie Thomas, the Minnesota mother ordered to pay the corporate music industry almost a quarter of a million dollars for allegedly infringing music copyrights.
Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA thought they’d finally scored when judge Michael Davis told jurors that simply making songs available in a shared folder written to her computer hard drive by Kazaa amounted to infringement, even if actual distribution hadn’t been proved.
“Its presence in these cases is ubiquitous,” said Ray Beckerman, the New York lawyer who runs Recording Industry vs The People, the famous online archive of RIAA cases and associated documents, and who himself represents people singled out as RIAA targets.
“It’s shameful.”
But it’s still out there, “Through heavy advertising via Google (you might have seen some of their ads on this blog as well), and questionable SEO marketing,” says Janko Roettgers on his P2P Blog, going on
Case in point: Brilliant Digital sent out a press release through PRWeb today that touts a new option to share HD home movies. The whole thing doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and in fact the new feature isn’t even mentioned on Kazaa.com.
But that’s not really why the company invested a few bucks in PR.
The great thing about PRWeb is that you can include links in your press releases, and Kazaa’s contains multiple links, with terms like “free music download” linking to its website. That’s good for Google juice, but bad for people who actually look for free music: Kazaa.com offers its subscribers a free seven day test period, but each downloaded track will stop working soon after you cancel that subscription.
“But wait,” says Janko, “that’s not all. The company also decided to include a really odd endorsement of its product in the press release, presumably to fill the gaps between those SEO links. Here’s what they came up with:
“Jonathan James, Web Hacker spoke of the endless possibilities the software provides to the Kazaa community “They are going to come at you like they came at ‘tereastarr,’” he said.”
If the name Tereastarr seems familiar, it’s because that was the name Jammie Thomas-Rasset used online.
“She might not feel all that happy about being part of Kazaa’s marketing campaign, but one also has to wonder what this endorsement is supposed to say,” says P2P Blog, adding, “Subscribe to Kazaa’s overpriced service, and you’ll get sued anyhow?
“The quote itself actually doesn’t come from Jonathan James, but from Thomas’ defense attorney Joe Sibley, who used it in her trial, according to AP.”
Jonathan Joseph James, “was conviceted of breaking into Nasa computers in 2000, and eventually committed suicide in 2008,” Janko says, adding:
“Whoops. That would have been a major PR blunder for any reputable company. Good thing nobody really remembers Kazaa.”
Disclaimer: I’m being sued by Kazaa boss Nikki Hemming for defamation. The case, which has been hanging over my head since 2006, is slated for trial in Vancouver, BC, in February, 2010.
Jon Newton – p2pnet
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
July, 2009
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July 8th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Wow, I thought the Charter of Rights actually meant something.
I hope you kick Kazaa’s ass in court. (Oh wait am I allowed to say they have an ass?)
July 8th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Kazaa’s press release has been whitewashed. They quietly deleted the entire third paragraph:
>They are going to come at you like they came at ‘tereastarr,’ Jonathan James, Web Hacker spoke of the endless possibilities the software provides to the Kazaa community “They are going to come at you like they came at ‘tereastarr,’” he said.
Too bad the Nikki Hemming “I am not a crook” libel trial isn’t being held in Australia, where there’s likely no shortage of witnesses who could testify that the supposedly “defamatory” things reported about her **and more** are indeed true. Discovery could no doubt expose a lot of skeletons in her huge closet.
July 8th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
“Business is not about individuals, and it’d be pretty foolish of me to take personally things that have happened in the past,” she says.
http://www.p2pnet.net/story/9698
July 8th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Okay, I gotta say something here:
1. Why is it that people think that just saying “they’re in business to make money” automatically justifies blatantly shitty conduct?
ISP’s neglect to upgrade their infrastructure, while drastically over-stating their bandwidth capabilities, and then resort to “traffic-management” schemes, while blaming their problems on “that kid with Napster” (Hi, Tom!) — but somehow that’s wonderful because, after all, they’re “in business to make money”.
Or: the MAFIAA lobbies governments to have entire technologies outlawed, their spokes-drone compares the VCR to the Boston Strangler, they attempt to sue anything they can’t get banned (including their own best customers) — but, yet again, that’s wonderful because they’re “in business to make money”.
Pardon me for sounding “radical” here, but it’s almost as if repeating the mantra “in business to make money” is nothing more than an excuse. “Don’t take it personal, it’s just business!”.
Wow, no wonder people distrust (or outright hate) “business”-types.
(Yet again, I’ll urge y’all to watch that “corporation” documentary I mentioned a while back.)
Is it any wonder that corporations do the type of shit they do, when everybody involved simply excuses it as the “costs of doing business?”
The worst — and lowest — culprits aren’t even the ripoff artists: it’s the people who apologize for/justify such conduct.
It’s like somebody going “well, you can’t really blame the guy for using rufinol to drug his date — after all, he WAS out to get laid, and she mnight have said no!”
Pathetic.
Nail ‘em to the wall, Jon.
July 8th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Tom Koltai is backing this same stupidity currently.