name and shame

in a recent post, i complained about a prominent pirate blog that was actually advertising, and thereby profiting from spreading music illegally. even if one could make a defence for downloading of music illegally (the argument my fellow blog member pete has raised is the one of people from poorer countries - it is a question of access), i cannot see how one can justify actually profiting from it through having advertising on the blog. one of the comments to my post was 'what can we do?'. the larger question of how techno should deal with the pirating and copying of music is a large question and not one i am going to deal with here (i would note as an aside, that one advantage of an all vinyl djing world is that this was perhaps the most effective barrier to piracy one could possibly find). what i want to do with this post is basically 'name and shame' those that are advertising on this music blog.

the problem with the 'name and shame' technique in this case is that i cant actually name the blog, as this would just promote it and make the illegal links even easier to find and potentially help the blog's revenue. what i can name is those that advertise on the blog. if labels or artists want the blog's details, they can send me a message and i would be happy to pass the information on.

and believe or not, this blog that provides copyrighted material is serviced by none other than google adsense. yes, it appears google supports things besides censorship in china... i've emailed google, so we will see if that does anything.

the primary ad on the page appears to be for free music toolbar called 'starware music toolbar'. i cant imagine any readers wanting to use this program, but obviously one to avoid. finally, on the blog, it lists the site 'mp3sparks' as its "lovely sponsor". again, i doubt this is a site readers would use, but steer clear of it (it is also seems a bit odd than an mp3 retailer would be the primary sponsor for an illegal mp3 blog).

i doubt this naming and shaming will do much, but perhaps it can be a small step in the right direction. as i said in the previous post, there is something seriously wrong with a music blog actually advertising and as such, profiting from sharing music illegally.