The Recording Industry Association of America seems to work on a very clear, simple theory. We live in a society driven by spectacle, and you get the most attention by biting the heads off kittens in front of children. So the RIAA has been behaving like complete bastards to tiny, insignificant people, knowing it gets a heap of publicity. If you want people to read a message, paint it on the side of a rhinoceros.

Now they may have gone too far. A hip-hop form based on promotional compilations allows DJs to argue and mock each other, and showcase the work of favoured artists. No money changes hands, and the record companies are not asked for copyright. It is an underground form.

The artists benefit, the record companies see it as free publicity, and it enables hip-hop to rub its piratical pretensions against the corporate demands of the record companies who provide the chance for bling.

“Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.

On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.

DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.,,,

…Brad A. Buckles, executive vice president for anti-piracy at the Recording Industry Association of America, said, “A sound recording is either copyrighted or it’s not.” And he said the DJ Drama case, like most piracy cases, began with illegal product, which was then traced back to the distributor. Chief Baker said that before the raid, DJ Drama and Mr. Cannon were sent cease-and-desist letters from a local lawyer.”

In a perfect world, the hip-hop audience, all those self conscious gangsta imitators, and the legions of retailers who live off their subculture, would rise up and stand outside the RIAA headquarters making voodoo and throwing burning rubbish bins from cunningly constructed trebuchets.

That is what French farmers would do. Truckloads of rotting carcasses. In Chile, the place would fill up with outcast families who live in rubbish dumps, chanting and blowing whistles until the management surrenders just to keep the smell out of the lifts.

After all, this is lifestyle war, folks.

I dream, I dream….

Details from NYT via Metafilter.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 5:45 pm and is filed under ideas and society, intellectual property. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.