The Australian company has been scrambling for months to find a way to convince record companies and movie studios that it is sincerely interested in becoming a legitimate, licensed distributor of mainstream entertainment content. It hasn’t yet been successful–Sharman and Kazaa, its file-swapping software, are still the target of lawsuits from the entertainment companies. Sharman hasn’t struck any large-scale distribution deals with major studios or record labels.
According to a brief statement previewing the campaign, the print ads will be a “call to action to peer to peer (software) users to communicate the message that, given the chance, users will pay a fair price for movies, music and games from P2P networks.”
The ads are also intended to tell traditional entertainment companies that they are “missing a huge opportunity” to reach file-swapping communities, according to the statement.
For much of its two-year existence, Sharman has been pursuing two goals that many see as mutually exclusive. Its Kazaa software has created far and away the largest file-swapping community online, built in great part on the unauthorized and unregulated exchange of copyrighted works, such as music and movies.
But it also has worked increasingly closely with Altnet, a division of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, to persuade the file-swapping community to buy or download authorized versions of entertainment content such as music or video games. Ultimately, the company has claimed in lawsuits filed against the recording industry and Hollywood studios, it intended to push unauthorized sharing almost wholly off the network.
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