Orange & Large Businesses Fund Illegal Download Sites

[Guest Simon Desser]

I had a little browse around numerous illegal music download sites this evening, and I couldn't believe how many were sponsored by massive corporations :roll:

Some of the ones I was shocked by were:- Orange, O2, T Mobile, Abbey, AOL, BT, Sky, NatWest :!: :!: :!:

I've not shown any names of the sites, so not to encourage visitors to them, but here's some examples.

I suspect that these companies might not even be aware that some of their internet advetising budget ends up on sites like these :?: but either way, surely this is wrong :?:

All the links work, and DO link back to the "Sponsors" site :roll:

[Guest zeta101]

they dont know...the companies (like orange) just pay the advertisers and the banners appear on all the sites...so its 3rd party advertising. An interesting issue youve brough up though. What i find interesting is that these sitea appear to be for illegal music/album downloads, but the sponser companies dont have anything to do with music etc, so they probably dont care if they promote something that is illegal as long as it doesnt affect thier sales adversely.

Im sure if there was a public fuss made of this then they would actually get thier act together (atlthough to be fair its the 3rd party advertising company who is at fault, they shouldnt do business with illegal sites, but at the end of the day, those sites get a lot of traffic and the advertising company wants to make money)

[Guest Monolithix [MVP]]

I've noticed loads of those Orange ads on various websites recently, and the O2 ones are always everywhere. The funny bit is msmobiles is one of those sponsors and has been ending up on a lot of the smartphone website (including here!) :P