After MuddyTorrent's first article on Perion (PERI), Perion management tried to suppress publication by pressuring SeekingAlpha editors to retract our article, which was previously approved for publication. Our research indicates a conflict of interest on the part of SeekingAlpha as Benchmark Capital is an investor in both SeekingAlpha and Conduit, and Benchmark stands to gain significantly from a successful reverse merger of Perion and Conduit, both large partners for Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing search engine. Shareholders interested in more balanced coverage of Perion may follow us at www.muddyinsights.com. We will continue to serve the SeekingAlpha community by cross-posting our articles on our instablog.
We were surprised that Microsoft is working with partners who are distributing Bing toolbars through these copyright infringing channels. We are seeking comment from Microsoft management on these practices.
If an independent third-party is able to uncover these activities so easily, it does not speak well of management when they pretend to be unaware of how their toolbars are being distributed. Perion management should not be having back room conversations with SeekingAlpha editors to suppress factually accurate articles. Instead, they should be protecting shareholders by calling for an immediate stop to working with pirate sites.
We have tracked the half-hearted attempts of Perion to disassociate with movie piracy and torrent sites, and while they have made a token effort to clean up their distribution, we were able to easily uncover dozens of additional pirate sites that continued to distribute Perion and Conduit toolbars. We have created several videos demonstrating how Perion and Conduit continue to work with pirate sites:
SweetPacks Conduit Toolbar on SeedPeer: http://screencast.com/t/XO8FaqmwMadY
MixiDJ Conduit Toolbar on ExtraTorrent: http://screencast.com/t/arCDqCJ2
InternetHelper Conduit Toolbar on Pirate Bay: http://screencast.com/t/vVPpWArWK
We are happy to privately send a list of pirate sites where Perion continues to distribute toolbars to interested readers and media organizations as we do not want to do Perion's work for them. Please contact us if you are interested.
Perion shareholders should vote "No" to the merger of Perion and Conduit because both companies are engaged in the same kind of questionable activities and have not shown a conviction to reform their practices.
Disclosure: I am short PERI.