ad sponsored piracy Archives

Are more advertisers hopping aboard the anti-piracy bandwagon?

by Ellen Seidler | Sep 23, 2015 | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Piracy | 0

Is online ad industry becoming more accountable? Yep, but there’s still (much) more to be done.

Some good news on the ongoing fight against ad sponsored piracy. Today, Group M, a major player in global media investment announced efforts to ensure that their media partners become certified providers of, or follow anti-piracy advertising guidelines established by the Trustworthy Accountability Group’s (TAG).

Facebook piracy has been an ongoing problem. Is it finally ready to face the music?

by Ellen Seidler | Aug 29, 2015 | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Piracy | 0

Facebook has long turned a blind eye to profiting from piracy on its pages. Has the worm finally turned?

This past week Facebook reached a milestone when, according to founder Mark Zuckerberg, more than one billion users logged on to the social media site in a single day. Part of that growth has come from video views (4 billion per day) and so this week Facebook also announced it would (finally) tackle the issue of online piracy that has long plagued the site. In recent months Facebook has been facing growing criticism that it has allowed “freebooters” to rip-off (monetized) YouTube videos and repost them on Facebook, thereby cannibalizing profits.

Ashley Madison ads appear on torrents for its hacked data on Pirate Bay

by Ellen Seidler | Aug 21, 2015 | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Law, Piracy | 0

Ad sponsored piracy run even more amok

This has to be the irony of ironies. According a piece by Lara O’reilly in Business Insider, advertising for Ashley Madison is popping up on the Pirate Bay in searches for the hacked data. At the bottom of the results that list the complete torrent to the stolen files there’s an ad for Ashley Madison’s website. I suppose given all the bad publicity of late, the extra-marital affair website needs to find customers wherever it can eh?

Five years later, why this “stupid Gay” fights piracy

by Ellen Seidler | Jun 1, 2015 | Ad Sponsored Piracy, Copyright, Google, Politics | 0

This month marks the five-year anniversary of my first blog post about online piracy and its link to advertising profits. At the time I was pissed. The movie Megan Siler and I had spent three years creating had just been released, and within 24 hours, had found its way online as an illegal download. One illegal copy quickly morphed into many tens of thousands.

What made me angry wasn’t necessarily the fact the film had been pirated. Though certainly I wasn’t pleased, it wasn’t really a shock. I knew in the back of my mind that piracy was an issue. However, I’d never really examined it up close. When I did, I was surprised not only by the how–but by the why. Online piracy was, in fact, an insidious for-profit business cloaked behind a curtain labeled “sharing.”

Online piracy is driven by profit

It turns out our film–like thousands of others, studio and indie–was just click-bait for a flourishing online market driven by greed. The breadth and scope of this illicit online marketplace was shocking. Examining a wide range of pirate websites I discovered an insidious, profitable and widespread economy driven–in large measure–through the complicity of major American corporations.