Newsgroups: alt.music
Subject: Kazaa Calls on its Fans to Help
From: Ablang <IWannaMarryHilaryDuff@ablang-duff.com>
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Date: 22 Nov 2003 12:11:46 +0800
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Kazaa Calls on its Fans to Help
Peer-to-peer service rallies users to help lobby the entertainment
industry.
Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Sharman Networks, distributor of the Kazaa Media Desktop peer-to-peer
software, is launching a $1 million advertising campaign this week, hoping
to mobilize its 60 million users to pressure the entertainment industry cut
licensing deals with Sharman.
The campaign, to be launched Wednesday in the U.S., U.K., and Australia,
includes advertising in selected newspapers, including student newspapers
at 34 of the largest U.S. colleges, and on Web sites such as Yahoo.com and
RollingStone.com. The campaign encourages users of peer-to-peer (P-to-P)
services to demand that entertainment companies begin licensing their
content to Kazaa, says Nikki Hemming, chief executive officer of Sharman
Networks. The campaign will also ask P-to-P users to educate their elected
officials on the issue.
"It's a call to action," Hemming says of the campaign. "It is time to
embrace peer-to-peer. We want to raise the awareness of influencers
worldwide that there's a better way to do things, a better way to market
and distribute content, and a better way to engage with fans that doesn't
involve suing them."
In September, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed
copyright lawsuits against 261 people it says are trading hundreds of
unauthorized files using Kazaa and other P-to-P software.
Neither the RIAA nor the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had
an immediate comment on the Sharman Networks campaign. Kazaa has criticized
the entertainment industry's approach.
Call to Action
The Sharman Networks advertising campaign is intended to counter the
stances the RIAA and the MPAA have taken against P-to-P software vendors
and users, Hemming says. The campaign will encourage P-to-P users to "try
and buy" licensed content already available on Kazaa, and to demand more
licensed content, she says.
"They will be encouraged to write to the (entertainment) industry,
politicians, to each other and have voice," Hemming says. The Kazaa
campaign will also "make it extremely clear that infringement is
unacceptable," she adds.
About 45 million licensed files are downloaded each month from Kazaa, and
those files include music, video games and movie trailers, Hemming says.
Kazaa receives licensed content through strategic partner Altnet, which
negotiates the licensing deals.
Hemming argues that music and movie companies could save 90 percent of
their bandwidth costs by distributing their products over P-to-P because
users of P-to-P software supply most of the bandwidth. "We want to ...
remind everyone of the opportunities being missed here," Hemming says.
Hemming wouldn't go so far as to say she expects the campaign will sway the
attitude of entertainment industry executives, but that she hopes it will
spark a dialog. "The advertising campaign is a trigger for mobilization,"
she says. "I think it would be extremely hard for an industry to ignore
millions of consumers, letting them know that they want to buy content."
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,113510,tk,dn111803X,00.asp
--
Hilary Duff is America's Sweetheart & an international HeartBreaker.
"FAILING = Finding An Important Lesson, Inviting Needed Growth" -- Gary
Busey
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