UK Law Enforcement Starts Seizing Music Blogs
  • squashedsquashed
    "From Dajaz1 (a site that is no stranger to unjustified copyright takedowns) we learn that the popular R&B website rnbxclusive.com (warning: threatening message on site) has allegedly been seized by the Serious Organized Crime Agency, a UK law enforcement agency, and its operators arrested on fraud charges. Not only does the replacement message contain a number of factually dubious claims, it also shows the visitor's IP address, browser and operating system, and threatens to track and monitor them. At a time when copyright lobby groups are strongly pushing for even greater powers through laws such as SOPA and ACTA, one is left wondering why they think they need them, when police can shut down websites such as this at will."

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/02/14/2236214/uk-law-enforcement-starts-seizing-music-blogs
  • TimTim
    As much as I usually take a stand against take-downs, this one did seem to be sharing an awful lot of singles of top40 artists - something which has always got blogs in trouble and for good reason. These artists don;t need the promotion of blogs and often don't give away the tracks.

    Leona Lewis, Kelly Clarkson, and Mel C for fuck's sake - they're about as pure commercial as you like.

    Not much sympathy here - they deserved to be taken down by the looks of things (from Archive.org)

  • squashedsquashed
    well, top 40 R&B, hip-hop aside...(those type of songs are a dime a dozen online, doesn't need a blog for anybody to find it.)

    Sounds like an agency meant to be thuggish getting an order to scare the public. (seriously, their music post coulnd't possibly draw more than few thousand crowd, hardly worth official time.)

    Seems a bit out of proportion, but why? Why now? why this blog? who ordered it? Is this going to be new trend?
  • TimTim
    I agree sites like this are a dime a dozen, but I don't think they add anything to the digital music discourse apart from giving people easy access to download illegal mp3s so I won;t shed a tear if this starts a crack-down.
    The site was getting pretty popular as well as its Facebook page has over a quarter of a million "likes" - a number pretty hard to come by to be honest.

    I'm thinking the labels ignored the site for ages with the free publicity and being able to market to people, but the the site admins noticed how big the site had got and were starting to either charge more for the ads, or were refusing to do exclusives for some mainstream rubbish and so got the boot - with SOCA on hand (and possibly payroll if the NewsInt revelations are anything to go by) to do the dirty work of shutting it down and looking scary.

    SOCA really should have kept themselves out of this - I would love to see how the money has flowed between then and FACT and other pro-copyright groups and lobbyists. How do you spell 21st century corruption, oh yeah - "copyright".
  • squashedsquashed
    shouldn't they chase around real big bad criminals or something instead dicking around behind keyboard?
  • TimTim
    Yup.
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