In the past few days, we’ve heard about a few incidents where the RIAA has asked hosting companies of bloggers to suspend accounts that post unsanctioned MP3s:
· Last week, Side One, Track One had its account suspended by its hosting provider because it posted a few Kaiser Chiefs Kings Of Leon MP3s–even though by the time the blog’s account had been suspended, the blogger had replaced the MP3s with links to streams sanctioned by the Chiefs’ management promotion company, Cornerstone.
· On Tuesday, the company that hosts Country Pinball Machine‘s MP3s shut down the blog’s account after the RIAA complained.
· Shameless Complacency posted some Wilco tracks today; shortly after, the blog was taken down “for a violation of [Wordpress'] Terms of Service” by its host, WordPress.com, although there’s no confirmation yet that the RIAA was involved.
Are blogs the RIAA’s next big target–and is the tactic of going to hosting companies first an extension of the RIAA’s attempts to get Internet service providers involved in its antipiracy methods? If you’re a blogger and you’ve had some strife with your host lately, drop us a line, and let us know which songs got you in trouble. (“Don’t Know Why,” perhaps?)
Frankly, I’m surprised that this hadn’t happened earlier. They sue Johnny Filesharer to “recoup some small part of the massive damage” but they let the music bloggers run wild?
Just another example of the bipolar nature of the music industry.
What did these guys expect to happen? The minute I read about Shameless Complacency posting new Wilco tracks on Stereogum I headed over there to warn the guy that it was a bad move and he’d probably get shut down. I got distracted, went back, and he was gone. Country Pinball Machine posted the new Avril Lavigne single, how dumb is that. a. why post crap b. they’re gonna get you
Wilco is net savvy and surely has a marketing plan that will involve bloggers in due time, to jump the gun against the best interests of the band is stupid and spiteful.
What I expected was NOTHING. Cornerstone said that my post was fine. Also, even when my host received the C&D from the RIAA I should have been notified to remove the songs instead of having my account suspended for almost five days.
I’m the owner of Shameless Complacency. I was completely aware of the the risks I was taking when I posted those songs, and I’d do it again if I had to do this day over again. A few emails to WordPress cleared up the whole issue, and my blog is back up. I’m not sure if the RIAA was involved, although they did give me some trouble over a Dinosaur Jr. a few weeks ago. The only description of the people who had my blog suspended was “the people who hold copyright over the tracks”. That’s a direct quote from wordpress. All in all, I thought the way the situation was handled was highly unprofessional. All it would have taken to get those links taken down was an email to me. I even have my email at the bottom of my blog. Overall, today was one hell of a day. Yesterday, my blog was totally unknown, and today I’ve gotten mentioned by both Idolator and stereogum in a matter of hours. I’m not gonna pretend I don’t appreciate the exposure.
I’d like to know which bitch-ass hosts are so quick to copmply with the RIAA. Name names. Who provides your web hosting?
If you represent a copyright holder and you have blogs shut down for putting up mp3s that you have up on your MySpace page, you deserve to be slapped across the face.
Going after MP3 sites that have 1 song that might drum up interest and publicity for an album? What a waste of time.
It shows why there is so much piracy. The RIAA is run by a bunch of idiots that take their eyes of the prize. Instead of finding a way to make it easily to LEGALLY buy and download MP3s (not M4As or other DRM versions), they waste their time hassling people.
Did you know that Apple sells songs via iTunes for $.99 and some record labels are unhappy becuase they want to charge more? THey don’t look at us as consumers, they look at us as either a walking wallet, or a pirate.
SOTO and Ke keep up the good work!
The bastards took down my account for the day because I was hosting a live concert from The Good, The Bad and The Queen that isn’t even commercially available!
Does anyone know of a database that let’s you enter a label name and it will tell you if it is an RIAA member?
Scary stuff. Completely co-sign bnb614′s comments.
I was on Pickaweb in the UK and my personal website was taken down because of King of Leon, Willy Mason and Grinderman. I even voluntarily removed the KoL song myself, before they kicked off, because other bloggers were having it taken down.
Fortunately my blog was unaffected apart from the loss of music, because it is still hosted on Blogger and I have a full backup of my site on my computer. But the bastards wouldn’t give me access to my archive or anything.
@Jon: try http://riaaradar.com/
IdolatorIdolator has a nice (if that’s the proper word) round up of other bloggers who have been fucked with by the RIAA, all for sharing some MP3s.When someone can prove to me that the Mika MP3 I posted to promote the album Life In Cartoon Motion, the one that got me in trouble, had any sort of…
Is RegnYouth gone too?