HYPERtext linking technology and communications

Situation Analysis

For several years, peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software companies fought a heated, public battle with the recording industry over the legal and compensatory issues associated with sharing music over the Internet.

Text 100’s client, StreamCast Networks, the maker of peer-to-peer file-sharing software Morpheus, was fighting the recording industry but also was struggling to overtake industry leader KaZaA. With a U.S. District Court ruling on the legality of its technology pending and an uncertain future, StreamCast turned to Text 100 for help heading off the company’s two chief adversaries: KaZaA and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Execution

Text 100 examined court precedents on the issue of copyright infringement, from early attempts to stop radio and television to more recent attempts to staunch VCRs, video rental stores and MP3 players, and evaluated public opinion by monitoring chat rooms and message boards, gathering indication of public sentiment from the savviest P2P users.

The campaign focused on discrediting the RIAA’s claims by presenting the seldom-articulated counterpoint to the assertion that P2P was an instrument of theft and piracy, and positioning StreamCast’s CEO Michael Weiss as a visionary whose experience in the entertainment industry made him uniquely positioned to speak out against the RIAA’s claims.

Evaluation

As a result of the campaign, StreamCast led the discussion around P2P and customers flocked to the technology–in the six months following the ruling, Morpheus added four million software downloads and nearly tripled the volume of coverage received. Text 100 secured more coverage for Morpheus than both KaZaA and the RIAA combined, which is amazing if compared to statistics prior to the ruling, when StreamCast was included in less than 20 percent of the coverage mentioning or featuring KaZaA and/or the RIAA.