Although the term “file sharing” has all sorts of ugly connotations, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, it’s even a win-win-win situation for the recording industry, music lovers — and Google.
There are countless MP3 file-sharing sites that don’t look anything like BitTorrent or Lime Wire. They’re low-key, homegrown blogs that don’t host illicitly copied music, but do provide links to third-party sites, or storage lockers, such as Megashare, where pirated music is stored. These bloggers do it for the love of the music, they say, but it doesn’t hurt that they make a little money from advertising along the way.
The low-profile success of MP3 blogs, and the apparent unconcern of the music industry, is in stark contrast to the aggressive anti-piracy actions taken by the Recording Industry Association of America in other spheres. For instance, the RIAA recently won a $222,000 judgment against a single mother of two for using file-sharing software Kazaa to trade copyright files. No similar action has been taken against MP3 bloggers.
Many of these sites, like Hangover Heart Attack and It’s Coming Out of Your Speaker, run ads through Google’s AdSense program, which means that Google, too, makes money from sites that direct people to bootleg MP3 files.
Anyone can sign up for AdSense — bloggers, publishers, nonprofit groups or even aspiring poets — although Google’s terms-of-service agreement prohibits websites that promote illegal activity or infringe on others’ rights. Google sells ad space on members’ sites, and it splits the revenue with the publishers.
Technically, these blogs could be considered illegal. The RIAA could make a claim that bloggers who direct people to pirated music may be committing “contributory copyright infringement.” And a claim could even be made against Google for profiting from the sites, says attorney Eric Custer, a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips.
But who wants to put a stop to it? The RIAA declined to comment for this story, but the publisher of one MP3 aggregator, who asked to remain anonymous, says music labels have been extremely cooperative. This blogger monitors more than 3,000 music blogs daily, providing links to files that have been uploaded to various music lockers. And no, the blogger has never been asked by a label to take a link down.
“Actually, we’ve been contacted by labels, promo agencies and even musicians and bands to help promote them. Which we’ve done, free of charge,” the blogger wrote by email. The blogger also has the impression that the site has helped expose people to music they wouldn’t otherwise hear, and may even help drive CD sales, although there’s no hard evidence of this.
A major moneymaking operation it is not. The blog, which generates thousands of pageviews daily from thousands of unique visitors, makes its creator just 75 cents for each hour put into it.
Google keeps the AdSense revenue split confidential, so it’s unknown exactly how much the company makes from each publisher in the program. In a recent SEC filing, Google said it pays “most” of the fees it makes from advertisers to publishers. A 2006 New York Times report suggested one publisher, Digital Point Solutions, took home 78.5 percent of the revenue, presumably leaving 21.5 percent to Google.
Whatever the split, AdSense is an incredibly profitable operation for the company, generating billions in revenue each year. In the third quarter of 2007 alone, Google made $1.45 billion, or one-third of its revenue, from AdSense. The amount of money generated by music bloggers, though, could be fairly marginal.
“Proportionately, I think (blogs) probably represent a very small percentage of the file-sharing market,” says Eric Garland, co-founder and CEO of BigChampagne, a Beverly Hills, California, market research firm that follows the file-sharing universe. “There are always going to be different mechanisms or vehicles for exchanging files, but ultimately, people go to a search-driven environment that you find in file-sharing applications.”
For its part, Google denies responsibility for content on the AdSense network and says it acts fast when it identifies publishers who violate its terms of service. And to enforce this policy, Google reviews participating sites to weed out content that violates the AdSense terms-of-service contract.
“In the same way we crawl websites (for our search service), we crawl publisher websites to flag information that may violate our policy,” says Google spokesman Brandon McCormick. “Every site at some point goes through a manual review. It’s something we take very seriously.”
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Posted in Google, Internet, Legal | 2 Comments »
British and Dutch police have shut down a “widely-used” source of illegally-downloaded music.
A flat on Teesside and several properties in Amsterdam were raided as part of an Interpol investigation into the members-only website OiNK.
The UK-run site has leaked 60 major pre-release albums this year alone, said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
A 24-year-old man from Middlesbrough was arrested on Tuesday morning.
‘Extremely lucrative’
The IT worker was led from his home in the town’s Grange Road and is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law.
At the same time his employer – a large multi-national company – and his father’s home were also raided.
A Cleveland Police spokesman said: “This extremely lucrative and creative scheme consisted of a private file-sharing website being set up. Membership was by invitation only.
“The site allowed the uploading and downloading of pre-release music and media to thousands of members.”
An IFPI spokesman said: “Once an album had been posted on the OiNK website, the users that download that music then passed the content to other websites, forums and blogs, where multiple copies were made.
“Within a few hours of a popular pre-release track being posted on the OiNK site, hundreds of copies can be found further down the illegal online supply chain.”
The site’s servers, based in Amsterdam, were seized in a series of raids last week.
It followed a two-year investigation by music industry bodies the IFPI and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
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Comcast has been “caught” blocking BitTorrent traffic in some areas, according to tests performed by the Associated Press. The news organization claims to have confirmed that Comcast is blocking—or at least seriously slowing down—BitTorrent transfers, regardless of whether the content is legal or not. If true, Comcast’s actions have serious implications for sharing information online, and by proxy, Net Neutrality.
The AP was tipped off to the possible P2P blockage by a reader who had noticed serious slowdowns on his Comcast connection. The organization then proceeded to perform a number of tests—three, to be exact—on two computers in cities on both the east and west coasts. AP chose to download a copy of the King James Bible through BitTorrent (because it is an uncopyrighted work) and went to work. In two out of its three tests, the downloads were blocked altogether, while in the remaining test, the download started after a 10-minute delay.
AP believes that the reason for the block and delay was due to reset packets being sent back from what claimed to be other torrent users—including the AP’s second computer. “However, the traffic analyzer software running on each computer showed that neither computer actually sent the packets,” wrote the AP, indicating that the packets were sent by a mysterious middle party. Further, the AP says that when it performed traffic analysis on another computer torrenting files over Time Warner Cable, over half of the reset packets came from the addresses of Comcast subscribers. This is curious, since Comcast’s 12.4 million subscribers only make up about 20 percent of US broadband subscribers.
Comcast spokesperson Charlie Douglas told the AP that the company doesn’t block access to BitTorrent, but did not elaborate on his definition of “access” (.torrent files can be downloaded just fine, for example). However, Douglas also said that Comcast does use something to keep the network running smoothly. “We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible,” he said. “This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.”
We’re not entirely sure that the AP’s tests are as conclusive as it seems to believe—after all, two tests in three cities does not constitute an exhaustive data set. We do, however, think that the AP—and others who have noticed the issue—are onto something. Everyone has been trying to figure out what, exactly, Comcast is doing to throttle P2P traffic in certain markets, and Comcast sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers is a probable cause. But doing so is also misleading, and could even be construed as an attack on other torrent users who are not using Comcast. There are other, more direct methods to go about filtering BitTorrent content, such as deep packet inspection. However, it has been argued that overprovisioning a neutral network is still cheaper than investing money on technology to fight such traffic.
Comcast’s actions also have implications for net neutrality. But that’s no secret, as Comcast has been among the plethora of ISPs that regularly oppose net neutrality legislation. The ISPs like to argue that, by allowing all Internet traffic to pass through the pipes equally, they could lose money because of overall network slowdowns. But customers pay for broadband service for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is so that they can get full, high-speed access to the content of their choice.
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Posted in Internet, Security, Torrent | 2 Comments »
