Slashdot Log In
Music Industry Tells Advertisers to Boycott "Pirate" Baidu
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jun 06, 2008 03:16 AM
from the takes-one-to-know-one dept.
from the takes-one-to-know-one dept.
An anonymous reader points to a story at PC Authority, which begins: "Music industry representatives have warned advertisers to stop supporting Baidu, China's largest search engine, because they believe it is encouraging music piracy. Baidu is the largest source of pirated music in China, according to the representatives, who describe the company as 'incorrigible.' The Chinese firm's music search engine is accessed through what is described as a prominent link on the company's home page."
Related Stories
Submission: Advertisers told to boycott 'pirate' Baidu by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Don't all search engines do this? (Score:5, Informative)
OMG! (Score:5, Funny)
OMG, you got t3h first post and you write something relevant and on-topic, not an AC troll?
What a n00b! Next time, make certain your post includes: Something About Goatse (have you seen that film? Cameron Pwndarse is great!), p1st fr05t, or a little ASCII art man with a big willy (reminding us that Slashdot suXx0rz).
Seriously mate, you'd better be careful, the question of trolling Slashdot is the inalienable perogative of your working Anonymous Cowards. What's the use of us sitting up all night, waiting for the next submission. If a member jumps in before you and doesn't even post a troll?
As a member of the Amalgamated Union of Arseholes, Loudmouths, Cowards and Other Trolling Persons I order you to stop getting first posts, and to stop getting first posts NOW.
Parent
Re:OMG! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:OMG! (Score:4, Funny)
You mean -1, Prince.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Don't all search engines do this? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Don't all search engines do this? (Score:5, Interesting)
However, some friends of mine, "The Station", an indie jam band with two CDs out and live shows posted at archive.org for several years (lots of shows posted) and the obligatory MySpace page, AND their own URL, returns "do you mean The Situation?" with a list of RIAA songs with "station" in the name.
The RIAA should sue Google. Or considering that the indies are competing with the RIAA maybe the RIAA paid Google to do this?
Now where did I put that tinfoil, I need to make a hat...
Parent
Re:Don't all search engines do this? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Don't all search engines do this? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why i want my adverts displayed on Baidu's top 500 tracks page.
Parent
That's What Google Hack is For (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Don't all search engines do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterfeits and piracy are a cultural norm in most Asian countries.
Over there, the CD is an advertisement for the tour.
AFAIK, nobody actually expects to make money from CD sales in Asia.
So what if the search engine has a MP3 search page?
Like the counterfeit goods, the MP3s are still there, even if nobody is pointing you directly to them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it isn't the musicians making the complaint. It is the copyright holder which is something entirely different. This is RIAA members (read DISTRIBUTORS) that hold the copyrights.
which one is that prominent link? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:which one is that prominent link? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:which one is that prominent link? (Score:5, Funny)
All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:which one is that prominent link? (Score:5, Funny)
See, I do I know what sarcasm is!
Unless I was the other one...
ERROR: Recursion depth exceeds 256 calls.
Parent
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should have sent Baidu a DMCA notice instead. </sarcasm>
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the search engine relevant for my business or not? Does it bring me customers or not? First of all, does it have users or not? That's what counts.
Whether that search engine is a haven for copyright infringement, questionable porn or DIY bomb making, do I care? If that's what brings them users and me visitors (and customers), more power to them.
Hmm? Moral? Hey, I'm pretending here to be a corporation out to make a profit, stop pestering me with things that ain't in my dictionary!
Parent
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Thanks! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thanks! (Score:5, Interesting)
Their aim isn't to stop downloading of RIAA music; why would they? It's free advertising. If they had a problem with that then they wouldn't let their music be played on the radio. KSHE in St Louis plays seven whole albums, uncut and uninterrupted, every Sunday night [kuro5hin.org] and has been doing so for decades. I had Ted Nugent's Cat Scratch Fever [wikipedia.org] on cassette a week before its release, recorded in full from KSHE. That was thirty years ago! You can sample from a radio even more easily than recording a cassette.
The RIAA's problem is that their competitors, the indie bands, are on baidu. Take all the indies off baidu and the RIAA will have no problem with it.
Nobody takes issue with free advertising unless a) it's their competetitor's free advertising or b) they're incredibly stupid.
Parent
Why didn't the FTC convict Sony? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony infected many computers with a dangerous trojan, which would have sent any hacker to 40 years in Prison, and they escaped conviction or even a fine.
RIAA has been ruled against many times in court and ordered to pay lawyers fees to a poor single mom, and still they are loose: No arrest, no seizure of their equipment, etc.
MediaSentry and other RIAA hackers violate state laws in Montana, California, Texas and a host of states and yet continue to operate even though they are illegal. None has been sued yet and their findings are valid in a court of law: Its like a thief acting as a witness to a houseowner against another thief.
RIAA would be happy if the whole internet shut down tomorrow but they still can produce music at zero cost and sell it for $29.99 an album.
The Baidu search engine should show its middle finger publicly at RIAA and also sue them for defamation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount for loss of earnings? Ask the RIAA where they pull their numbers out from, I'd reach for the same place.
But I wouldn't use a lot of lube...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
How Do I Submit My Tracks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I searched for my own music [geometricvisions.com] on Baidu, and it didn't find it. How can I submit it?
I clicked all the links on the homepage, and hovered my mouse over all the links on the result page, and couldn't find anything that looked like a submission form.
I'd love it if everyone in China were to download my compositions - they are all Creative Commons-licensed.
Re:How Do I Submit My Tracks? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:How Do I Submit My Tracks? (Score:5, Funny)
</audiophile>
Parent
Re:How Do I Submit My Tracks? (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunatly the selection of music sold is quite limited. The recent hit parade and old time classics are readily available in the CD shops or on the street. (all are copies, legal CD's are very hard to come by)
But then again, you are able to find just about everything on the internet. Ting (Mandarin chinese for 'to hear') is one of the better MP3 sites, indexing thousands of MP3's in a wide range of styles which can be freely listened to online.
(http://www.ting-mp3.com)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Humiliated? I doubt it. Insulted, most certainly. The US Supreme Court has already decided that the linking was legal in the US. IPR laws, my ass. You can frame this anyway you want. Whether it's on one large web site, or on many little web sites, the linking is legal in the US either way. It's the hosting and the sharing that are not.
As to getting blocked, we're the ones getting blocked ri
Money by advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that simple (Score:5, Insightful)
For a start, advertising doesn't really pay big bucks any more. We've had companies flop during the peak of advertising money in the dot-con years with that model, what makes you think it's more viable now?
A quick search says that the Cost Per Click (i.e., what the advertising companies pay) can be as low as 1 cent per click. After the ad provider takes their share, it's even less money for the site carrying the ads. And that's per _click_. So if every single person downloading your music were to actually click a banner per song downloaded (fat chance) and the ad provider gave you the full cent (fat chance), you'd need to sell some thousands of songs per month just to pay for your hosting costs. Probably more, since you use bandwidth too.
Pay per view, even less. If you go really per view, expect it to be small fractions of a cent.
Remember, you're not Penny Arcade or PvP Online as a musician. You're not going to make a new song per day, and serve an ad or two with each one.
The RIAA members also provide one valuable service: they create a scarcity via marketing. There are hundreds of thousands of girls who can sing just as well as Britney Spears, and don't look much worse. But there's only one Britney Spears. And boy band members are even more dime a dozen, and chosen mostly on how well they look (i.e. how wet would they get a 16 year old girl seeing them on stage.) Not on any skills in composing that music or expressing anything profound. There are a few tens of million of young guys who'd be not much worse than, say, Backstreet Boys, and some would probably be only better.
So while it's easy to say "OMG, musician X is only getting a pittance out of the CD sales, and gets all the money out of concerts anyway," the more cruel reality is that musician X would be yet another _nobody_ without the publisher. Maybe a thousand people would know about his music, and maybe a dozen of them could be arsed to show up at a concert.
To put it otherwise, it's an economy of massive overproduction. If left to the free market, you'd be about as able to make a money out of music as you'd make money out of your farm in 1929. When there's 10 times more produced than anyone needs, and the products are perfectly interchangeable, the price doesn't just go 10 times lower. It spirals down to the point where nobody can make a living out of it.
Now I'm not saying it's necessarily the best model for society, but that's how it works.
And the moral of the story is: well, maybe a better model can be found, but it will have to be a better one than, basically, "but I want them to work for me for a tenth of a cent in ads."
Parent
Re:It's not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
> It spirals down to the point where nobody can make a living out of it.
And that, is called a commodity [wikipedia.org]. Your view assumes that people should be able to make a living out of something beyond its real economic value. What does this add of value for society or for any of the individual parties? Nothing.
What you fail to mention is that it's more than just "marketing". The music business needs to do more than promote the acts it wants to push, it needs to actively sabotage and destroy the competition.
It is like the inflation added to diamonds by De Beers "marketing" (destruction of low value diamonds). All you are doing is pumping the price of an artificially rarified stock by destroying the surplus (eg crop burning, diamond warehousing, attacking the free market in music). To me that goes against the grain of free market principles.
Parent
It's really not that simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I decided to make an attempt at making some money, and hopefully some day making a living (pipe dream), off of all the music that I write. I, like many, figured the old way of doing things was dead, the net is the future, and what works for others should work for me. I decided to apply the webcomic business model to music. I write a song every month, post it for free, and you can, if you are so inclined, buy some merchandise to support my efforts. The back catalog is all available to anyone, and I make a couple other inconsequential updates between songs to keep the site alive and active more than once every thirty days.
So, a couple years back, I setup my website [scienceofshape.com] (shameless self promotion), and I started rolling with the project. What's working in my favor:
* I've got a MySpace page, complete with all the similar musical artists friended.
* I took out some advertising on what I figured would be the most relevant (affordable) website, Questionable Content.
* I do plenty of forum posting (read: free advertising), and had a few friends and some interest in my music before the site was launched due to that.
A couple caveats, to be honest and fair about this:
* I honestly do not write even remotely commercial music; it's instrumental, and it's somewhat experimental. It's not mainstream.
* My T-shirt and web design may or may not be the best; those are not my strengths.
* I don't update absolutely every month. Right now it's working out to about two on, one off, but I've had some longer on streaks.
* I could play the MySpace / LastFM angle harder than I do, I suppose.
* I don't play live. Probably the single biggest dent in this whole thing, and likely by a good margin.
So, no, I'm not poised to take over the internet and become the next Arctic Monkeys, and while I certainly daydreamed about such things, I was mainly hoping to cover costs, and maybe even make enough to purchase another effects pedal or even a new instrument. My total haul from not quite two years of all of this? Not enough to cover the domain name for a single year. Hell, even if the merchandise was completely cost-less to produce and I made 100% profit on it (Cafepress certainly takes plenty), I would still be in the red. Take out items bought by my friends and that would be even more true.
Honestly, a record contract is looking better and better the more I try to go it alone (this isn't my only musical project ever, either).
I'm not saying that because it doesn't work for me, it won't work for anyone, but it's not as simple or as easy as one might think. The net isn't the answer to everything, and the old guard isn't completely irrelevant or without its advantages. Going with a new, cutting edge model of distribution does not equal success, nor does it equal easy or guaranteed money. It doesn't necessarily even equal any money.
Parent
I looked at the home page and (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait...
Music industry to adapt? (Score:5, Interesting)
The business model for the music industry has always been:
1. Buy expensive recording and vinyl pressing machines.
(The price on this equipment gives them a de facto monopoly on production)
2. Pay musicians a song for their work (maybe this is where the expression comes from?)
3. Sell disks for as much PROFIT as possible
In the 'new world' there is no monopoly and ipso facto no music industry.
OK, so this is a personal first (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like nothing better than to boycott Baidu. Their Baidu Spiders arrive in hordes and spend hours crawling my site. They ignore crawl-delays and denies. They're looking for online poker files that were placed there by some illustrious Chinese citizen or other in an attempt to deface my website about two months ago. That lasted about four hours (from the middle of the night, local time, until I woke up next morning and made it go away), but I'm still dealing with the Baidu invasion. They're worse than Genghis Khan. An attempt to contact the email address provided resulted in a bounce stating that my ISP (Comcast) is blocked in China. My next step will probably be simply to block any contact with Baidu at all, and I've been tempted to extend that to the whole of China.
So while I generally deplore the actions of the Music Mafia, my perception is that Baidu has invited the actions by their own behavior, which is by no means above reproach.
Re:cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, yes. Don't feed the trolls. But if the article is a troll in itself, why not?
Parent
Re:cool. (Score:5, Funny)
I could see that work, if the song is good. Then again, would you want to see the new smash hit "Bush is great"?
Parent
Re:cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting - in many ways, we're seeing a return to medieval ideas of productivity and "intellectual property". Payment comes from a wealthy patron, not a wider audience. Works are distributed to anyone who has the means to copy them. Anonymity is not uncommon, especially for more controversial writings. Music earns money in performance. Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity. I think we could learn a lot from people like Chaucer and Dante.
Parent
Re:cool. (Score:5, Informative)
It's that way in most of the world, really. I'd bet 99% of all musicians don't make a living off their music; they may look cool when they're playing in their bar band on Saturday night, but they're right back in the cubicle (or fishing boat, depending on your profession) with the rest of us on Monday.
We see and read about the rich musicians at the very top all the time, but they're a miniscule fraction of the entire music playing populace. It's obvious that the organizations responsible for all the copyright bruhaha are interested in protecting those few moneymakers at the top of the pile.
psychodelicacy: Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity
This is a good point. The definition of plagiarism is subjective and like all things settled by litigation, usually favors the people with the most expensive lawyers (i.e. the top media/communications companies). It's been that way in pop music forever (a few good examples can be found in the book, Confessions of a Record Producer [amazon.com]) -- one only has to look at the R&B (Black) music scene in the 1950s-70s to see how many ideas were illegally swiped and resold by people like Pat Boone.
Parent
Re:cool. (Score:4, Interesting)
And who sends out more copies of music than the musicians themselves through radio broadcasts? How many times everyday do they copy the same Top 40 song on the same radio station?
For top musician talent selling 20,000 seat arenas, even if ticket prices average as little as $20 you should be clearing more money per performance than the average worker clears in a year.
How much money do pretty girls walking down the street make per year from men "stealing" their image into their eyes? That's no different than copying any imaginary property.
The existence of paid cable television stations proves that people are willing to pay for content in advance of the content being created. Do you know what you're going to watch in the future? Specific episodes? Boring or exciting news broadcasts? Are refunds ever offered if the content subjectively "sucks"? Nope. This goes for subscriptions, events like concerts, and all sorts of content which cannot be evaluated before paying, like video games, software programs, books.
It's a *miracle* any of this imaginary property obtains value in the first place. Creators complain they can't make a living without copyright protection, but how the hell does anyone ever pay for that content without receiving a significant portion of it for free in advance? It's literally a game of Monty selling boxes that might contain something good or might contain absolutely nothing at all. It's the same old hustle of con artists and circus promoters. But suddenly the price being charged vastly exceeded the present expected value of consumers. Consumers were ripped off far too much for far too long with the pushing of crap and filler, which was just mostly copying the advancements of the few greats anyway.
Yet look at entertainment thriving in the world of professional sports, which is making entertainer athletes richer than ever before. The difference between football players and musicians is football players go to work a lot more during the year, and copyright isn't market interfering inducing a huge percentage of the population to try to seriously make their living by playing football.
Music has just been plagued by terrible marketing and inefficient middlemen dinosaurs. Why aren't music concerts shown on television as much as sporting events? Because the music industry marketing "sucks" and their product has been undercut on price and exceeded on quality by competing entertainment forms.
Yet notice how copyright applies to even professional sports. Is this really constitutionally justified promotion of the advancement of the arts and sciences? Hell no. And disrespect for all forms of imaginary property government protectionism has been thus earned.
Copyright isn't even at all needed for content creators to make a living. How the hell are they affording the ability to create art in the first place if they aren't paid in full in advance? Obviously, there is a lie and a contradiction in the false incentives artists decry copyright is necessary for delivering. For if they can create art without being paid first, then copyright does jack squat for the creation of that art. And if they can be sufficiently paid in advance to produce, then copyright is completely unnecessary.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We have this strange notion that music can be given away for free but is somehow also not public and can still be sold?
It's a bit like a book publisher letting anyone have a free copy of a book then complaining when people do not buy it
Why would we want to pay for low quality records? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not that nobody is willing to pay for recorded music, it's that the product that American record companies tend to offer is crap. 5 minute tracks, usually they aren't all that good, I'll be glad when the current music industry falls so we can focus on the art again.
Music is not a product, it's art. A true masterpiece is priceless and will be paid for. An artist should get paid when CDs are being sold, however when music is shared thats advertising.
People aren't going to buy your albums or go to your concerts if they don't know who you are!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have a faint idea how much good music costs you for a movie? Now imagine the studios finding out that they could easily save a lot of money by just including the name of the artist in the credits (i.e. what they do anyway)...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't see the logic in a search engine whose primary goal is to let you find whatever you're looking for. Yes, people will (ab)use it to look for illegal material or to find a source to acquire goods illegally. That's a given. But that is not the main reason why people go there and use it.
Now, one may argue that a lot of people use any P2P technology to excha