P2P deception sites are finally getting noticed with reports that the FTC is now taking this up. I talked about this same topic with the FTC at their File Sharing Conference in November.

THE BAD: While the P2P industry as a whole is fighting to make the business legitimate and safe for consumers, these sites undermine all of that.
They engage in a variety of questionable business practices, many of which are illegal. A few of these:

• They represent the service and its use as legal, which it's not.
  


• They steal other companies P2P software. They sell and directly profit from it when they have no right to distribute it.
  


• They buy and use domains names that are misspelled version of legitimate software providers to intentionally mislead consumers.
  


• They use other companies product names in their products, both without a license and to deceive consumers.
  

I've even been hit by these scammers at TrustyFilez (note the misspelling). I suppose it's a badge of honor.

THE GOOD: There is someting to be learned from the deceptive site owners. They are master marketers, employing brilliant tactics from micromarketing (targeting domains and using minisites to capture traffic) to search engine optimization and CPC ads to creating P2P software review and recommendation sites that link to their minisites. They squeeze value -- and money -- out of consumers where P2P developers can't, except through their own negative consumer actions like bundled software.

It is an amusing irony that you can find ads from many of the deceptive sites on legitimate P2P sites. For example, today Slyck had Google ads for music-sharing.net,
allcoolmusic.com, and
my-free-music.com. I regularly update the URL filter to block these deceptive sites here at the P2P Insider's Blog. ... On the other hand, if you're feeling frisky, click away and use up their Google ad budget.

THE UGLY: While the FTC attention is applauded, any result will be negligible. Just like spammers, the deceptive P2P sites will simply move overseas where they can't be touched. and use international ISPs. Even if the sites remove their illegal claims that P2P use is 100% legal, their USP and revenues will only be slightly dented.

Another possible solution is civil litigation from P2P developers whose software and trademarks are being illegally used. But the industry is too small and too distracted with larger problems.

There is no real solution. I have only a few suggestions to salvage something from these scammers.

• Market better. Legitimate P2P developers should ensure they own all reasonable domains, commit to full consumer disclosure to better differentiate themselves from scammers, and use the same marketing tactics that work for the scammers.


• Click 'em if you see 'em. Don't be shy. If you see them knocking on your front door, let them in. In fact, some people now circulate web pages with gaggles of scammer CPC ads so you can hit them where it hurts.

Lastly, from the Department of the Paranoid, don't they say "the enemy of my enemy is my friend?". Surely this isn't another RIAA PR tactic to discredit P2P. ... Right?

Here's a group of links:with scam site listings and commentary.

• ZDNet


• Slyck 1* :: Slyck 2


• P2P forums


• MP3 Music Downloads Scout


• P2Pnet


• ArriveNet


• * The Slyck forum was recently hacked. Some threads have not yet been restored.

Marc Freedman

RazorPop, developer of TrustyFiles, the leading multiple network P2P file sharing software

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