Shakedown

The Recording Industry Association of America is on a campaign to get the government to help it enforce laws against file sharing and piracy.

And while the recording and entertainment industry's ethics are pretty terrible across the board, it seems they have a lot of trouble with more prosaic fact-checking:

Yesterday it issued a press release announcing a piracy bust in New York which unearthed 421 CD-R burners.

Only there weren't 421 burners, but "the equivalent of 421 burners."

In fact, there were just 156. How did the RIAA account for this discrepancy?

"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed," was the official line yesterday.

I especially loved this part

Apparently another example of the Association's difficulty grappling with new technology. After the RIAA's website was hacked, with large sections rendered inaccessible, spokespersons explained the difficulties were due to a sudden upsurge in popularity.

Well, that's one way of putting it.

Perhaps the most trouble aspect of this story:

The other curious aspect of yesterday's release is the use of Secret Service agents in the bust. The Secret Service, we naively presumed, was employed to protect high-ranking elected officials[*]. Perhaps this is a further indication of who's really in charge.

This, from an industry that was found to have cheated on nearly 100% of artist contracts. Would that Hollywood were as honest as Enron...

Posted by Mitch at December 16, 2002 09:01 PM