Fake news from the RIAA
A reader writes, "The Recording Industry Association of America wants to communicate with TV news audiences. The company I work for just distributed this video package nationwide to TV News Stations. It already aired in Dallas and one network and one major news gathering service have requested tapes. This thing could be all over the news this week. The video you see was preceded by graphics which told stations who paid for the content and named the spokesman. This is how the RIAA and other organizations get their news out in order to influence consumers." Link
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Advertorials. They're not just for the Pentagon and Big Pharma anymore.
I smell a fake. I've seen sever Advertorials, plus I work in video production. This was a zero budget crapfest with an amateur editor and a mediocre camera.
While it wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover that the RIAA were sending out fake news to plug their agenda, it would surprise me to find out they were sending this.
It'd surprise me even more to find out that someone paid for this.
So I say:
FAKE!
I have to agree with Str1cken. Even my local crap news channel has better production values.
Hasn't this been a standard practice for just about everyone from the government to industry for a few years now, anyway?
Gotta love the little advertisement at the end, though.
Producers never sell at flee markets.
Not every disc at a flee market is illegal. In other words, it'd be a terrible crime in their eyes to for someone to sell a CD when their done with it (Not nesscierly copying first either!)
Actually I wouldn't be surprised if this was legit, though "suspicous packaging" from their own criteria make this seem fake. I kind of hope it isn't just for the irony factor.
This is actually a pretty common thing. It would generally fall under the name of PR rather than advertising. There are a lot of companies that send out these types of reports all the time to newspapers, radio stations and tv stations. Here's some fake news from Sony about saving lives in China. http://www.napsnet.com/health/73319.html. This is nothing new.
Why would the audio quality of pirate CDs be any worse than the real thing? It's digital, and most duplications are as well.
Ok, presuming that this is real...
I love the way the RIAA uses the term "organized crime" to describe the people who make the fake CDs. Makes it sound like the Mafia and it's ilk are involved.
"Music compilations that would only exist in the minds of fans" - So, basicly, the pirates know what you want better than the companies do.
"pirated products often look amateurish" - most of the ones i've seen looked exactly like the originals. most of the pirated products that i've seen that had amateurish packaging were toys.
"odd locations" - because nobody has ever bought an lot of product from a business closure and sold them at a flea market.
"The audio quality on pirate cds is usually atrocious" - oh, really? digital copying. I kind of doubt that most of the pirates are intentionally dropping audio quality when that would actually require more work on their part.
Seriously, guys. This is a big story. I think FEMA needs to hold a press conference, STAT.
This is a VNR (Video News Release) and they have been a common practice for years. They are targeted to local television news organizations, and they are carefully crafted to look and sound like local news (hence the production values). Stations that need to fill a few minutes on their newscast might run something like this as is. You'll sometimes hear this referred to as "VNR Journalism". A somewhat less common relative to the VNR is the SMT (Satellite Media Tour), in which some sort of expert is made available for live interviews to talk about why Sony Running Shorts (tm) are a very popular Christmas gift this year. Guess who paid for the whole thing? Anyways, it's one of the reasons why I don't bother watching local TV news.
As somebody that works in TV news and has seen many VNRs, I can't imagine any major station wanting to run this particular item too badly. Ethics of running manufactured news aside, the production quality for the item is particularly bad. From quick, choppy edits to constantly moving camera shots, to brief flashes of black (wtf?), it all makes it pretty disorienting to watch. Most viewers will retain very little information from the item, and that which they do retain--billions of dollars from selling pirated music? come on--are too fantastic to be credible. While technical standards have generally dropped in the television news industry over recent years, I don't think they're quite this bad yet.
Daniel Price's Slick: A Novel is a gives a wonderful, albeit fictional peek behind the curtain of VNR's.
The best part I like about this VNR is one of the tell-tale signs of the approaching apocalypse is, if the CD consists of a "dream compilation" of songs you'd never see, run screaming from the merchant.
That is, the RIAA is telling you, "If it's something that you'd actually be HAPPY to pay for, it's not from us."
Sigh.