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.
Striking Back
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."
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