p2p news / p2pnet: “A fantasy,” writes Rod Smith in the Seattle Weekly. “Cmdr. Bainwol snakes through the maze of agents poring over the shabby apartment that, until a few hours ago, had served as a terrorist safe house. Ducking into a hallway closet, he whips off his gas mask, finally away from the smoke. His satellite phone vibrates.

” ‘They started firing as soon we hit the buzzer,’ he says. ‘We lost three guys: two FBI, one RIAA. They got away. But our intelligence was dead on. We nabbed a couple dozen mix CDs and some mash-ups. It looks as though a lot of stuff on the discs was illegally downloaded. We slipped the bodies out well before the fire engines got here. First responders don’t move all that fast in Sioux Falls’.”

Sound far-fetched? – asks Smith and, “Of course it is,” he answers himself. “No one has equated casual violation of intellectual property laws with terrorism since former Attorney General John Ashcroft stepped down. Nor has Mitch Bainwol, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America – a trade organization representing the nation’s major recording labels and their subsidiaries – ever participated in an armed raid. But ever since Bainwol replaced Hilary Rosen, in 2002, the RIAA has been awfully cozy with the feds, and far more active in attempting to plug the myriad ruptures plaguing the music industry’s revenue pipeline.”

Actually, Rod, as the boss of Organized Music’s RIAA, Bainwol would more fittingly be called Godfather than Commander, but sticking to the police analogy, although he personally may not have taken part in “an armed raid,” his troops have, or damned near.

The RIAA and its brother pseudo-cop organization the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) both brag every chance they get that they regularly and routinely initiate, and take part in, raids against on supposed ‘pirates’ [counterfeiters] around the world.

For example, the MPAA is currently boasting about Big Broom, an entirely corporate bust in the Philippines which, it emphasises proudly, tied up 60 vehicles and nearly 500 people.

In Malaya, a 20-year-old man who’d been selling VCDs was shot and critically wounded by police. “There was a struggle which led to an enforcement officer opening fire. The shot was at close range and it penetrated the youth�s chest and hit the patron of a coffeeshop, who was having his dinner, in the back,” said reports. A police officer was quoted as saying, �An assortment of items such as the iron stand of the VCD stall, which could have been used as a weapon, were recovered at the scene.”

Shot for trying to sell a CD, even if it was probably counterfeit? And guess who inspired the ‘bust’?

But he was lucky. He survived, unlike Ousmane Zango who was killed by New York city police May 22, 2003, when they raided a warehouse trying to “crack down on pirated CDs“.

Moreover, the two outfits often work together and in case you’re thinking they have no hard connection to the cops handling the raids, two New York Police Department cops said to have taken MPAA payoffs to arrest people who allegedly sold counterfeit DVDs were being investigated by NYPD Internal Affairs.

But back to Rod Smith’s Seattle Weekly article, “Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black “raid” vests the unit members wore,” says an LA Weekly item. “The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read ‘RIAA’ instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.

“The Recording Industry Association of America is taking it to the streets. Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on people making and selling illegal CDs in the hood.”

And, “With all the trappings of a police team, including pink incident reports that, among other things, record a vendor�s height, weight, hair and eye color, the RIAA squad can give those busted the distinct impression they�re tangling with minions of Johnny Law instead of David Geffen,” the LA Weekly states, adding:

” ‘They tried to scare me,’ Borrayo said. ‘They told me, ‘You are a pirate’ I said, ‘C’mon, guys, pirates are all at sea. I just work in a parking lot’.”

Meanwhile, “Even more pressing problems loom for the RIAA, especially regarding the 14,800 lawsuits filed by the organization against alleged illegal downloaders,” says Smith. “After successfully settling out of court with hundreds of victims, er, defendants – many of whom protested their innocence while balking at potentially astronomical court costs – the association is finally getting its day in court, thanks to Patricia Santangelo, a divorced mother of five living in Wappingers Falls, N.Y., accused of downloading six songs. Given that the presiding judge has already rebuked the RIAA’s attorney for attempting a final round of flagrant, last-minute intimidation, Santangelo’s prospects are good, thanks to her all-too-believable contention that a friend of one of her children downloaded the offending tracks. Hello, PR disaster.

“On top of that, the association’s clout in scandal-ridden Washington might very well wane, as Mr. Bainwol’s Republican-insider status turns from asset to liability. It’s conceivable that he might end up on the witness stand at some point, given widespread allegations of illegal activity on the part of the National Republican Senatorial Committee prior to the 2002 elections.

“Just before joining the RIAA, he served as executive director of the NRSC, directly below Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Sen. Frist, needless to say, currently has problems of his own.”

Also See:
Seattle Weekly – What Is the RIAA Thinking?, December 21, 2005
Big Broom – MPAA in the Philippines, December 21, 2005
critically wounded – Man shot in pirate CD arrest, January 14, 2005
crack down on pirated CDs – Shot Penang ‘pirate CD’ victim, January 16, 2005
MPAA payoffs – MPAA, RIAA, NYPD ‘raid’, May 1, 2005
Tepito market – IFPI shock-horror piracy report, July 22, 2004
LA Weekly – Quasi-legal squads raid street vendors, January 9, 2004
Patricia Santangelo – Teens next RIAA victims, December 23, 2005

This entry was posted on Friday, December 23rd, 2005 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Entertainment. 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.

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