How Major Film Studios Manipulate YouTube Users 120
An anonymous reader writes "A year before the major movie companies were offered the chance by YouTube to 'block, monetize or track' uploaded copyrighted material, studios such as Disney were already commissioning PR companies to create bogus YouTube users — complete with authentically 'trendy' semi-literate user-profiles, on accounts that appeared to be set up by young and 'edgy' teenagers. These faux 'users' were able to post high-definition videos from copyrighted movies without being penalised or impeded by YouTube's Content ID algorithms, and their posts, deliberately crammed with piracy-related search terms and timed (even to the day, in one case) to coincide with related DVD and Blu-ray releases, sometimes accrue a million and a half hits or more, whilst those of genuine YouTube uploaders fall at the site's Content ID firewall. This article looks at how the major studios have reacted to YouTube in the last four years, and also examines in-depth three such examples of apparent 'astroturfing' involving the theatrical or disc releases of Toy Story 2, Speed Racer and Spider-Man 3."
Only me (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes its logical and legal but it should also be marked as an advertisement.
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Re:Only me (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's being funded or run by the product owner or retailer then it should be. It's an easy way to fraudulently pass a product marketing off as an unbiased community review.
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The content is not the problem , the fake users who write positive comments are : it can give the impression that something is a lot better than it actually is.
Offcourse, on Youtube they have to go to the trouble of creating new accounts. Here , they could just post as an AC , and no one would notice.
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And maybe you are kdemetter posting AC?
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To bad i didn't think about that earlier :-)
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Well , it depends : if you want to find out if product is good , you could look at the comments. But with fake users , it's hard to know how much of the comments are actually genuine. Not to mention that all those users could be downmodding the actual critics.
I don't think anything can be done about it though , but it's good to be aware.
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When I go to Amazon or some such, I immediately look at the lowest ranked reviews, then sort them into idiots, people who are never satisfied, and true criticism. I then consider if the criticisms are things I care about. No amount of astroturfing will prevent me from getting a good idea of the quality of the product.
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I guess every film trailer has accurately reflected the film it's advertising,perhaps not. I'd rather hear from people who saw the film and are enthusiastic about it because it really is a good film. No film studio is ever going to admit its made a stinker of a film or that the second or third sequel of a successful initial film just ran out of plot.
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If you don't want people doing this, do
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Not exactly, they don't want people posting part of their movies without permission. It's the studios' content and they are free to post it on their own terms - their terms being that only they may post parts of the movie.
For example, if you buy a DVD of a movie, you may watch it, but you may not take some parts of the movie, edit them together, add some titles and overdub it in an ominous voice. The studio may do it (and we call it a trailer). The only problem I can see is that they do it under false usern
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The problem is this entire thing is them pretending that people are doing exactly that. You can't claim you don't want people doing something and then secretly pay people to do (at least what is purposefully designed to LOOK like) exactly that. It's like the police claiming they don't want people jaywalking and then constantly paying people to jaywalk all the time all over the place.
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if you buy a DVD of a movie, you may watch it, but you may not take some parts of the movie, edit them together, add some titles and overdub it in an ominous voice. The studio may do it (and we call it a trailer).
Actually, under a certain percentage, yes you can, it is called a review.
Re:masquerading (Score:2)
BANG.
That's the bit. It's the whole category called "Appearance of Impropriety". It's just this side of entrapment. Notice the article kept sayin "edgy". So I bet some of those profiles have comments like "Look at the movie I ripped" ... but they have a secret Shield Against Lawsuits +7.
Also, then when something goes viral, they then get to make nice cash selling the CD. But sky help us if a User posts a video! Oh gawd, he world will end! Sue him! Oh wait. It went viral too. Print the CD!
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Why? A movie clip is a movie clip. If the content is somehow less appealing to you because it's been placed there by the copyright owner and not some 13-year-old in her bedroom, then your enjoyment of media is predicated on whether or not you're depriving someone of something they have full right to, be it reimbursement or simply the free exercise of their copyright. Either way, the problem doesn't lie with the studios. It's you.
Why is this moded down?
Its the most concise statement of the fact in this entire thread.
If a high quality clip posted by the rights holder is somehow inferior to a crap-quality clip posted by a hacker (all else being equal) then clearly the consumer's preference for ripped off content drives the whole equation.
Raiding the neighbors garden is more fun than being handed a hand picked washed carrot by the gardener?
Re:Only me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only me (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that there were even a number of cases where a given studio's legal arm ended up DMCA-takedowning the material that the same studio's PR arm was putting up, and then accusing youtube of a sinister role in contributory infringement...
Yes that came out recently as a result of the YouTube vs Viacom (ongoing?) court case.
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But you are registered - are you not ?
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It would be funnier if his Slashdot Userid was 6...
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This was just a way for the labels to get Google to help make them some money before the big copyright-infringement payout. Like interest payments.
Re:Only me (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the way it goes. Same with record companies releasing music out on the torrents to gather interest. Come to think of it, games and print are the only entertainment mediums I can think of that don't commonly use this tactic.
Too bad the studios and record companies don't realize that they lose something with these tactics: consumer's respect.
When a game studio or print publisher goes belly up, we feel bad for the people working in those businesses. We think of all the hard work and often times, little pay and appreciation they get back. On the other side of the aisle, the movie and music industry can run ads 24/7 showing the sound engineers and stunt men and their families and thanks to the industry's notoriously underhanded ethics, you can only think, "Man, what a manipulative group of assholes."
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Back in the early 80s I learnt how to make boomerangs, took them to school and during lunch breaks I threw them on the large playing field away from everyone, then some of the kids in my class purposely came closer to watch and then went and complained to a teacher I was throwing them too close to others, so I moved further away and guess what those little bastards did, yup, they purposely moved closer just so they could complain again to the teacher.
I somehow do
Re:Only me (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hypocritical for at least two reasons:
1. The movie companies claim to lose money on piracy, despite their revenues continuing to increase steadily throughout most of the 2000's, and despite research showing that pirating often stimulates sales. And now it turns out they were using the marketing effect of piracy themselves - that it was "pretend" piracy doesn't make a difference to its marketing effect.
2. By pretending to pirate movies, they set a bad example and encouraged the behaviour they claim to be against, and even brand as immoral in their anti-piracy propaganda.
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Good point.
Re:Only me (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I would argue that those studies are exactly why the film industry hates piracy.
Look at it like this: they're a business. Businesses want a steady revenue stream. Ideally, entertainment becomes a machine - 1x money goes in one end, and 1.5x money comes out the other end, no matter what. If sometimes, unpredictably, when you put 1x money in 1.1x money comes out, that's bad - but so is putting 1x money in and getting 2x money out. Unpredictability in general is bad, even if it ends up working out in your favor.
How do businesses combat unpredictability? With marketing. By molding how people perceive your product, you tune the machine; yes, you make its output higher, but you also make the output range narrower - you remove the unpredictability from the market. I bet that one of marketing's greatest victories in the modern era has been to convince people that its goal is simply to improve sales at any cost, not to stabilize them.
This is clearly very important to almost every business, but especially entertainment. I mean, just look at the budget for any major game or movie - there's quite frequently an even split in resources allocated to making the thing and advertising the thing - which, to a business, means that they think advertising is at least as important as the actual product.
So where does piracy come in? It's the equivalent of millions of dollars spent on marketing, that the business has absolutely no control over. That makes type-A CEOs flip out - not because they're losing sales, but because, in essence, they've lost control of something. And they have good reason to, a lot of the time - instead of consumers being hit with a carefully crafted marketing message that frames the product in exactly the right way, they're just exposed directly to the product itself. Remember that budget allocation? Piracy literally makes half of what the company spent on bringing the product to market useless.
So yeah. Those studies that say piracy might actually increase sales? Businesses don't give a shit. What they care about is the unauthorized marketing, which adds unpredictability to their income and makes a large part of the resources they spend meaningless.
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Per your analysis, it sounds to me more like: Marketing departments, desiring to keep their well-paid jobs, are desperately trying to ensure that higher-ups don't notice that corporate marketing has been rendered obsolete by viral marketing (including "piracy").
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Also a good point.
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Actually, I would argue that those studies are exactly why the film industry hates piracy.
Look at it like this: they're a business. Businesses want a steady revenue stream. Ideally, entertainment becomes a machine - 1x money goes in one end, and 1.5x money comes out the other end, no matter what. If sometimes, unpredictably, when you put 1x money in 1.1x money comes out, that's bad - but so is putting 1x money in and getting 2x money out. Unpredictability in general is bad, even if it ends up working out in your favor.
How do businesses combat unpredictability? With marketing. By molding how people perceive your product, you tune the machine; yes, you make its output higher, but you also make the output range narrower - you remove the unpredictability from the market. I bet that one of marketing's greatest victories in the modern era has been to convince people that its goal is simply to improve sales at any cost, not to stabilize them.
This is clearly very important to almost every business, but especially entertainment. I mean, just look at the budget for any major game or movie - there's quite frequently an even split in resources allocated to making the thing and advertising the thing - which, to a business, means that they think advertising is at least as important as the actual product.
So where does piracy come in? It's the equivalent of millions of dollars spent on marketing, that the business has absolutely no control over. That makes type-A CEOs flip out - not because they're losing sales, but because, in essence, they've lost control of something. And they have good reason to, a lot of the time - instead of consumers being hit with a carefully crafted marketing message that frames the product in exactly the right way, they're just exposed directly to the product itself. Remember that budget allocation? Piracy literally makes half of what the company spent on bringing the product to market useless.
So yeah. Those studies that say piracy might actually increase sales? Businesses don't give a shit. What they care about is the unauthorized marketing, which adds unpredictability to their income and makes a large part of the resources they spend meaningless.
That actually really makes sense. I had always thought of marketing as just advertising, but you're absolutely right. It's more about control.
Would you rather they... (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to court?
Hire goons?
Shut down Youtube with DOS attacks?
They have a multi-billion dollar investment in their industry. You can hate their movies if you like. You can despise the prices of popcorn. You can't deny they have an interest in being sure that their investment pays off.
As far as actions go, it's less annoying than rick-rolling.
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Rick-rolling is a unique "feature" of our culture, a practical joke or graffiti, essentially. Monied manipulation of the population writ large is not the same.
Rick-rollers don't seek to manipulate my wallet/vote/behavior (aside from perhaps a little keyboard rage, though personally I find it amusing more often than not). No, these big players actions aren't annoying...but they sure as hell are insidious - it would be better for us if they were annoying, so we could be alarmed to their actions.
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It's because the guy who posted it is supposed to be someone who actually cares enough about the movie to edit and upload it, when in fact he's just a marketing shill making a buck.
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hmm
The "pirate" really really liked the movie and shows selected clips of the best parts.
The "pirate" really hated the movie and showed only the worst parts (same parts ?! who'd have thunk!)
The "pseudo-pirate" shows only the very best parts since he's being paid to do so, to boost revenue.
I'd have to say I'd rather
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Rick-rolling is a unique "feature" of our culture, a practical joke or graffiti, essentially. Monied manipulation of the population writ large is not the same.
Rick-rollers don't seek to manipulate my wallet/vote/behavior (aside from perhaps a little keyboard rage, though personally I find it amusing more often than not).
I still find it amusing myself (personally very late to the RR meme myself), but I'm still finding new ways to inflict Astley on people. And as an aside, it looks like even Konami jumped onto the Rickroll bandwagon with Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party 3 [youtube.com].
Then again, does it count as a Rickroll if you already know the song is one of the selections in the game?
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Go to court?
Hire goons?
Shut down Youtube with DOS attacks?
They have a multi-billion dollar investment in their industry. You can hate their movies if you like. You can despise the prices of popcorn. You can't deny they have an interest in being sure that their investment pays off.
As far as actions go, it's less annoying than rick-rolling.
It's less antagonistic than some of their methods but it is still an indicator of their core dishonesty. They are saying "doing this hurts us", trying to prevent us from doing it, then doing it themselves because it actually helps their business. What's good for the goose should be good for the average youtube user.
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But it looks like infringement. These look like any other youtube user out there, and their stuff isn't being flagged, nor is there any apparent permission listed on the video page.
It's dishonest and misleading.
Nobody ever promised you honesty and fair dealing. If they did they were lying to you.
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Copyright infringement is not the issue here, dishonest, contradictory business practice is. It is a hugely conflicting message when studios pretend to be average users to upload their own videos then chase after, interfere with and block real users doing the same thing, when they have already acknowledge by their actions that people uploading to youtube makes them more money. It's not a matter of who owns the copyright, because obviously that is the studio, it is that the studio's actions belie the idea
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you can shut down youtube with a DOS attack? silly me, here i was thinking you needed a distributed denial of service
how do you do it with a DOS attack?
format a: /q:youtube ?
deltree c:\windows\youtube ?
ipconfig /flushdns /youtube?
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You can't deny they have an interest in being sure that their investment pays off.
"Having an interest", financial or otherwise, is not a justification for unethical behavior. Ever.
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Astroturfing "marketers" [wikipedia.org] are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Anonymous commercial speech should be illegal.
Wasn't it a law... (Score:3)
That if you advertise or support a company, and are paid for by the company - you had to declare it?
This is an honest question...
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Plus they kinda are showing us who they are advertising for...whether or not they are being paid shouldn't be an issue since the intent of the advertiser can't be fully taken into consideration. Even if they are
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If there is such a law, it'd completely destroy the Viral Marketing industry
Wow, what a fucking tragedy that would be
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Plus they kinda are showing us who they are advertising for...whether or not they are being paid shouldn't be an issue
Would consumers behavior change if they knew it was paid for? Yes? Well then it damn well is an issue. Whatever the viral marketing parasites would like to believe. Bunch of lowlifes stealing millions (billions?) of hours of peoples' time and attention for nothing in return.
Even if they are being compensated, we don't know whether or not they themselves are such fans of the company they w
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Probably depends on your jurisdiction. In Germany, yes (Telemediengesetz 6, IANAL).
CC.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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But even then there are loopholes. For example, many gaming magazines get a budget of x amount of advertising dollars above and beyond the actual advertisements they have. Those extra dollars are used to purchase copies of games for review. In that sense they didn't get it for free even though they really did.
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That if you advertise or support a company, and are paid for by the company - you had to declare it?
This is an honest question...
Which Youtube posts are paid advertisements.
Thanks, I'm here all day.
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you post good videos, they're still good regardless of who you are, your agenda, or if everything in your profile is made up. I don't see how they're manipulating anyone.
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Re:Who cares? ... It is called lying. (Score:1)
If you really can't see how they are manipulating anyone, perhaps you should get your conscience checked.
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you post good videos, they're still good regardless of who you are, your agenda, or if everything in your profile is made up. I don't see how they're manipulating anyone.
Well, if they don't accurately and honestly identify themselves then how are others who upload supposed to know that the videos by the movie companies are not violating any copyrights? If it's OK for some random people (aka the movie studios hiding behind fake personas) who's to say other videos of the same movie aren't allowed?
BTW, if it isn't clear that they have something to hide by doing it this way then ask yourself: Why are they hiding behind many fake YouTube accounts in order to post their content? If they weren't trying to pull a fast one then why not just post it as themselves/their company?
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So since you believe it's wrong for companies to hide behind anonymous personas on the grounds that it's dishonest and inaccurate, I take it you also believe it's wrong for regular
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If they aren't being upfront about what they're doing then there's a reason to suspect they're hiding s
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You kind of missed the point. Ok, let's put forth this scenario:
Let's say the movie companies put a copy of a movie up on youtube. It's popular, lots of people watch it, and so forth. It's legitimately their material so they're allowed to post it and it isn't taken down by youtube because of this, but it's presented as some 12 year old kid's post.
Now *your* 12 year old kid watches the video, sees that it's been up for a year with no problem and has millions of views. He thinks to himself "gee, although
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So what you're saying is, if a movie company anonymously posts a video they own the copyright to, how are other people to know it's not ok to post the same video for which they DON'T own the copyright to? Well, I think the very basics of copyright law cover that: if you don't own the copyright, don't post it. In fact YouTube has a terms of service that specifies just that. Just because it's on YouTube, doesn't mean it's public domain. That should clear up any confusion you may have.
They aren't posting it anonymously - they're posting it under many fake personas pretending to be people who liked it. Now, I don't support anybody uploading/downloading/copying/stealing/etc anybody else's work, but I can certainly see how these companies can mislead people (can you say kids?) who might think it's OK because so many others are doing it. This AC [slashdot.org] put it pretty well.
BTW, can you imagine if the RIAA seeded a bunch of their own music to torrents and then started suing kids who downloaded them
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If you post good videos, they're still good regardless of who you are, your agenda, or if everything in your profile is made up. I don't see how they're manipulating anyone.
WTF? They are doing the whole thing to manipulate, in this case deliberately diverting people from possibly better alternatives. And because it's advertising drivel it's sure to be content free and emotionally manipulative.
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Marketing in a saturated market is a zero-sum game. When one player wins another must lose. In a saturated mar
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I agree that a big part of the attraction of the Youtube astroturf we're talking about is that it has content real users don't have access to, but I see two objections to what the studios are doing here.
The first is that what they are ultimately up to is fabricating outright falsehoods in order to obtain money from consumers. I realize that finding this ethically objectionable puts one pretty far out of the mainstream when it comes to what passes for business ethics today. We've decided as a culture to look
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If you post good videos, they're still good regardless of who you are, your agenda, or if everything in your profile is made up. I don't see how they're manipulating anyone.
Dang it! You've tricked me into watching good content! Damn you!
looking in the wrong place (Score:3)
They are looking in the wrong place.
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CC.
Re:looking in the wrong place (Score:4, Insightful)
Because YouTube offers 720p, 1080p and now 4K [slashdot.org]?
Re:looking in the wrong place (Score:4, Informative)
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Schwarzfahrer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFQXcv1k9OM [youtube.com]
Validation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao [youtube.com]
Complete History of the Soviet Union: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWTFG3J1CP8 [youtube.com]
And yes, I know that's a different definition of "quality" from the one used in the summary. I'm responding to a joke
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Cause it's easy and people are used to it.
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Next up (Score:2)
How breakfast cereal companies manipulate breakfast cereal eaters with hip characters in commercials during kids' TV shows.
Astroturfing? (Score:1)
Cosmic colossal astroturfing. 'This is an unpaid ad'. Of course the major studios are gaming the system. If it was on a 'YouTube' channel dedicated to them, then people would know clearly that posts are contrived. Since they have legal sticks that they like to beat YouTube with "Draconian Monetary Crimminals Association (DMCA)" blah blah, they can game the system to suit themselves. A double whammy is if they 1) get their own people to post illegal content that they want uploaded onto YouTube 2) Gene
it would have been so much easier (Score:2)
The quantum state of piracy (Score:1)
good point . . . zzzzzzzzzz (Score:1)
It was boring too.
True point(-s) though.
Somebody ought to do something.
RTFA, hate YouTube (Score:1)
'Genuine'? (Score:2)
How is a studio uploading a video any less 'genuine' than anyone else?
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Perspective (Score:2)