p2pnet - rss feed: Canadian Music Week: March 7
p2pnet.net news:- andPOP waxes lyrical over the Canadian Music Week, a Rogers Wireless glitzfest slated to run through March 7-10. As the post says, where else will $35 get you a pick from, “a roster of literally hundreds of Canadian and international artists … ?”
It features more than 600 “showcasing bands” at some 44 live music venues in downtown Toronto, promises Rogers. But that’s not all.
On hand will be independent and corporate music faces, some of the latter fronting for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 music cartel. And among those will be CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) spin-meister Graham Henderson (far right), who recently described the Canadian economy as a, “marketplace that has been infiltrated by counterfeits and pirated goods, endangering consumers and compromising our prosperity”. He went on, “the sale of unauthorized knock-offs of legitimate products has mushroomed into a multi-billion-dollar underground economy, an economy that robs many Canadians of their ability to earn a living and that dims the light of innovation that is essential to our future economic prosperity.”
Are you thinking, as Henderson hopes you are, of all those deprived Canadian musicians and their dependents, not to mention support workers, who’ve been put onto the streets by the bands of wicked Canadian file sharing criminals and thieves, as the labels call people who don’t buy ‘product’ from them?
Henderson’s facts usually turn out to be fiction and as Canadian law expert and commentator Michael Geist points out, Henderson somehow neglects to say most of the counterfeit items were clothing, watches, sunglasses, and handbags.
As Geist observes, “All this tells us is that there is a certain percentage of Canadians walking around with fake Ralph Lauren shirts, wearing fake Rolex watches and fake Oakley sunglasses, and holding fake Louis Vuitton handbags. So what? This is hardly constitutes an economic crisis given that few, if any, Canadian name brands that are affected by this issue and virtually none of the counterfeit products are actually made here.”
Also on hand, however, will be Netwerk Music’s Terry McBride (left).
In August, 2005, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), of which the CRIA is a clone, subpoenaed David Greubel for alleged file sharing, accusing him of having 600 suspect music files on the family computer, but targeting only nine specific songs.
“Nettwerk got into it when 15 year-old Elisa Greubel contacted MC Lars, a Nettwerk artist, to say she identified with ‘Download This Song,’ a track from MC Lars’ latest release,” p2pnet posted at the time.
“My family is one of many seemingly randomly chosen families to be sued by the RIAA,” Emily emailed MC Lars. “No fun. You can’t fight them, trying could possibly cost us millions.
“The line ‘they sue little kids downloading hit songs’, basically sums a lot of the whole thing up.”
But, “Suing music fans isn’t the solution, it’s the problem,” McBride told us.
Will he and Henderson exchange pleasantries?
Stay tuned, and meanwhile, click here for a list of the artists who’ll be at the event.
Also See:
andPOP - Canadian Music Week Begins Wednesday!, March 3, 2007
Michael Geist points out - Big Music’s counterfeit claims, March 1, 2007
subpoenaed David Greubel - p2pnet talks to Nettwerk Music, February 14, 2006
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
