Why underage porn is bad PR

Amazing as it sounds, the sorry case of the first major Bittorrent Adware marketing campaign has gotten worse, both in terms of what it means as a warning for those who ended up becoming involved and those who would possibly ever think of considering that this was, in any way, shape or form, a vaguely good idea.

Bittorrent didn't have this kind of problem before. The odd rogue Malware bundles, sure, but not a clear and concise marketing campaign. And as Dave Methvin of PCPitstop.com points out in his utterly explosive writeup, he had been tracking these things for quite some time too. Since May, as a matter of fact. And what he has potentially discovered, is enough to make every Adware company out there want to examine every single last detail of a distribution deal down to the last ounce in future...

Dave: In reviewing comments on BitTorrent forums, it appears that MMG's infected files had been posted as early as mid-April. Administrators of the BitTorrent sites removed the files and/or banned the users when someone reported them, but it sometimes took several days before this occurred. This provided a window of opportunity where the downloader would be unaware of the effects of MMG's file and continue to share it for others to download.

MMG seemed particularly busy with new files on Fridays, perhaps in the hopes that the admins would be away for the weekend and unable to clean up the mess for a while. Although I observed several files that were hundreds of megabytes during May, the later posts tended to be less than 50 megabytes; perhaps MMG was betting that more people would successfully download short files before warnings were posted and the files removed.

So here we have the first inkling of this infestation, which increased dramatically as time went on. The first "shocker" with this was that the MMG installers did not disclose every piece of software in every bundle - the second, that a mass of supposedly copyright protected mediafiles were being distributed, and neither the Adware vendors or MMG seemed to be able to say who exactly had responsibility to licence these files. So far we have undisclosed Adware, seemingly out of date installer licence agreements and potentially copyright infringing mediafiles which would potentially leave the end-user (who assumes the content is legit) in a world of RIAA fun and games. This is already (and you don't need me to point this out), a very bad thing.

However - things would get worse. Especially for the Adware companies who made such a massive mistake in getting involved in this distribution. I actually feel sorry for them - to a degree. As anyone who knows something about anything will generally tell you, play with fire enough times and...well, you can guess the rest. I would also like to state - emphatically - that none of the below accuses (or even suggests) the mentioned (and any unmentioned) Adware companies of being involved in creating, uploading, distributing or having anything at all to do with the media content mentioned, other than simply agreeing to have their software bundled with mediafiles provided by MMG (or some crazy affiliate of theirs who really have taken leave of all common sense). They couldn't possibly have forseen that things could go in such a wrong direction through the apparent actions of MMG, or else they wouldn't have gotten involved. Though maybe they should have forseen that, without screening every last ounce of what somebody actually plans to do with their particular distribution, you are just asking for a recipe laced with disaster.

180 Solutions, Direct Revenue, IBIS, Belcaro and a bunch of others have all ended up getting their software involved in a distribution campaign that, as Dave states in his article, potentially...

(Contained)"...adult videos (that) depicted young girls and implied they were under 18 years of age".

That isn't just huge, it's off the frigging scale.

Worse still, companies bundled in the MMG packages that Dave has spoken to have basically said, "None of this is our responsibility, it's MMG's" and (of course) MMG are nowhere to be seen. This is despite Dave trying endlessly to get someone, anyone, to actually take some responsibility for what started out as a "bunch of harmless Adware installs, fall for it and you're stupid, haha" and has ended up as a royal mess. Unlicenced content, undisclosed installs and potentially illegal pornogrpahy have all come flying out of the woodwork and although the UA issue will no doubt be investigated, as Dave quite rightfully points out, will anyone actually be penalised for any of this if the allegations are found to be true?

US and Canadian law says that any producer / distributor of porn needs to take reasonable steps to ensure the actors are 18 or over. This means proof of age, records kept etc. As it looks like a fair bit of this stuff was just whizzed from the Internet, there's a chance that some of this depicts actual under 18's. And even if they're not, you can still possibly get into trouble by claiming the actors involved are under 18.

Probably a bad move to have called them "Lolitas", then.

Canadian law, coming up:

(5) It is not a defence to a charge under subsection (2) in respect of a visual representation that the accused believed that a person shown in the representation that is alleged to constitute child pornography was or was depicted as being eighteen years of age or more unless the accused took all reasonable steps to ascertain the age of that person and took all reasonable steps to ensure that, where the person was eighteen years of age or more, the representation did not depict that person as being under the age of eighteen years.

If the courts took a hard line on the strict letter of the law and classed this as UA pornography (and I should add, I'm not a lawyer in any way, shape or form so I honestly don't know what would happen if the girls in the video Dave mentions only appeared to be under 18, even though it was claimed that they were), then this would get real bad, real fast. And if the worst happens and it turns out this video actually does contain girls that are underage...

Then it's probably even worse for MMG that they are based in Canada.

CONCLUSION

So many things have gone wrong with this software distribution package, it's hard to know where to start. It seems like one bad turn of events has followed another, until it reaches the point where you have to wonder if all the Adware vendors simply picked MMG's name out of a hat at random. Actually, if they'd done that they would probably ended up with a better deal. What can we learn from this?

* In future, every single Adware vendor out there MUST have someone at the quality control helm when picking someone to distribute their software. Holy shit guys, there's now a whiff of possible underage pornography (or implied, which in Canada is just as bad. Did the MMG guys even know their own laws on this?)

How the Hell can this be anything even approaching good PR for anyone who got involved with MMG? You would think companies who pull in as much revenue as the companies I've examined over the past few weeks would get their top legal brass to check every last aspect of a deal like this out, who licenced what files, if anyone would actually have a problem with the chosen method of supply (in this case, the Bittorrent network) and (more importantly) - that no-one from the company charged with throwing these files around would, in a fit of madness, start passing around what according to Dave appears to be possibly illegal content. And if it's not illegal, merely hinting at it (Lolita? Please!) cannot be condoned either. It's a bad idea, a big mistake and infinitely more dubious than any potentially "screwy" install. In other words, if you're going to show "pretend" illegal pornography and also infer that it is by calling it "Lolita", what (really) is the difference in intent and execution between that and the real thing? Are both possibilities not equally sickening?

It's also rather disappointing to see the lack of response Dave has had on this. You would think when something like that was suggested, people would be absolutely falling over themselves to help out. However, it looks like no one is willing to actually drag the guys from MMG into their office and scream at them for ten hours straight in an effort to find out exactly what in God's name they were playing at. It is to the credit of most (if not all) companies that they have apparently severed links with MMG now this has come to light. The problem is that much, much more now needs to be done to make sure something like this does not happen again.

* No more "Adware Bundles" - ever. Though the usual rogue affiliates will continue to do stuff like that regardless of what the parent company does to try and stop them, you would think when the parent company itself has some sort of oversee of the whole project, they would try to ensure that things wouldn't go so utterly tits up as this one has. Apart from the fact that these bundles just tend to kill the host system - how does that make anyone any money - it's obvious that you cannot hope to police your networks in any way, shape or form.

Especially if the guys you picked to distribute your software in the first place managed to screw up so royally.

* Keep away from "new!" channels of distribution, on the basis that people will think it's a "really good idea". They won't. They'll think it will suck. And seeing as how Bittorrent was pretty damn clean to begin with, it was only a matter of time before too many of these files would be available and they would stick out like a big, fat sore thumb.

The only real "good" news from all this is that no-one in their right mind will ever be so silly to attempt a campaign like this in Bittorrent land ever again. Especially bearing in mind what has been found in the PCPitstop article. I still cannot believe that I am sitting round discussing major companies that have managed to wander into something like this by accident. It simply boggles the mind. These are companies that have tried (in some cases) to straighten up some of their installs, their business practices and lots of other things, and then they go and get themselves caught up in something that could undo any good work done purely by association with MMG. If I worked for any of those companies right now, I'd be majorly pissed off. I'd be asking questions. I'd be thinking how on Earth anyone could have allowed this to happen.

For years, we have predicted that, eventually, Adware companies would end up getting stung in a big way by one of these things. The funny thing is, I always thought it would be at the hands of a rogue affiliate - not the company faced with distribution of said software. You know, the seemingly legit guys that the Adware companies have checked out thoroughly and paid lots and lots of money to do it right.

The question now is, what will the Adware vendors mentioned previously do about this? If I were them, I'd be marching down to Canada with a large piece of wood and an angry team of lawyers demanding answers. If the underage porn allegations prove to be true, this will be one stink that will never, ever go away for anyone caught up in the crossfire.

And if it turns out that MMG themselves have a rogue affiliate that has caused this problem, then I would predict that would hopefully mean the end of every single affiliate scheme out there for a very long time.

But that still then leaves the problem of who to actually blame.