Trickle-Down Piracy: How Everyone Can Steal Anything

Trickle-Down Piracy: How Everyone Can Steal Anything

1. First, there is an insider. We can't really know when or what is taken, but according to investigative reporting done on the subject before, usually someone inside of an organization is offered money for a copy of an album. Otherwise, music journalists who have been sent copies of an album may be distributing it as well.

2. August 23, 2009- The first track from Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 is leaked- "Off That (Ft. Drake)"- a full week and two days before the press conference with Jay-Z about the leak of his album and MTV's hosting of the album. This track may or may not have been leaked by the record companies on purpose; the album may have been circulating torrent web sites like www.piratebay.org for weeks now.

3. September 1, 2009, 10 AM- Jay-Z states that he is happy that people are enjoying his music despite the leak. The album is not yet released but the rapper and his record company allow MTV's The Leak to stream the album early.

4. The album is streaming on MTV, but the files for the whole album are easily available elsewhere. A quick search reveals several sites hosting the same files that The Leak is streaming, ripped straight from the media player that MTV.com is using.

5. Twitter accounts like 'diditleak,' (5:35 PM) and small, off-the-radar music and mp3 blogs are already critically dissecting the tracks while conveniently offering download links to copies of the album files beneath their reviews.

6. September 8, 2009- The album is released.