Kid Rock Starves To Death
MP3 Piracy Blamed
May 17, 2000
LOS ANGELES–MP3 piracy of copyrighted music claimed another victim
Monday, when the emaciated body of rock-rap superstar Kid Rock was
found on the median of La Cienega Boulevard.
How many more artists must die of starvation before we put a stop to
this MP3 madness? asked Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording
Industry Association of America (RIAA). MP3s of Kid Rock's music were
so widely traded and downloaded by Napster users that he was driven
back to the mean streets from whence he came, dying bankrupt and
penniless in the gutter.
When found by police, the 28-year-old Kid Rock, born Bob Ritchie in
Detroit, was still clutching the cardboard Devil Without A Place To
Sleep Or Anything To Eat sign that had been his trademark ever since
the rise of Napster's MP3-sharing software bankrupted him in January.
Rosen said the RIAA would prosecute the music-piracy firms that are
responsible to the fullest extent of the law.
Napster killed Kid Rock, there's no doubt about it, Rosen said. As
soon as that web site went up last October, people stopped buying his
music. It's not surprising, either: Why would anyone in their right
mind pay $12.99 for a CD with artwork when they could simply spend
seven hours downloading the compressed MP3 files of all the album's
songs onto their home computer's desktop, decompress it into an AIFF
sound file, and then burn the data onto a blank CD?
If we don't do something, this technology is going to destroy the
record industry, said Nathan Davis, vice-president of Atlantic
Records, Kid Rock's label. Just imagine if the oil-change industry
allowed the public to have direct access to oil and oil filters,
enabling them to change their car's oil themselves without going
through Jiffy Lube or Kwik Lube. People would stop going to oil-change
shops, and the entire industry would collapse. We can't let that
happen to us.
The home page of the web site Napster, which has cost numerous rock
stars their lives.
According to post-autopsy analysis of Kid Rock's stomach contents by
the L.A. County coroner's office, his last meal consisted of
newspapers, cigar butts, old CD liner notes, and the partial remains
of sidekick Joe C., who had been missing since May 15.
Thus far, relief efforts on behalf of afflicted artists have met with
little success. In January, Metallica, System Of A Down, and Powerman
5000 teamed up for a concert tour known as Us Aid, but the rockers
were forced to cancel when concertgoers at the kickoff show in Tempe,
AZ, showed up with MP3 recording equipment. An all-star fundraiser CD
featuring Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Korn was similarly scrapped when
an individual known only by the user name [EMAIL PROTECTED]
acquired a promotional copy and made it available to millions of fans
over the Internet.
This is exactly the kind of thing we've been warning our fans about,
James Hetfield, the lone surviving member of Metallica, told reporters
during a press conference at Hollywood's Grace Church Homeless
Shelter. First, they found Madonna dead of a crack overdose in the
alley behind Liquid. Then my best friend and bandmate Lars is killed
by cops during a botched hold-up of a liquor store. Now, Kid Rock dies
of starvation like a filthy dog in the street. My God, people, didn't
we learn the lesson of Elton John?
John, the British rock star who went bankrupt in 1976 before private
ownership of music-pirating cassette decks was made illegal, died of
exposure on a Welsh moor that year after creditors repossessed his
clothing.
On Jan 24, 2008 6:31 AM, bordercollieaustralianshepherd
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Okay ... this is a few weeks old. Maybe seen by many. Worth a repos ...
Monday, December 31, 2007 by: Mike Adams
On the heels of the RIAA's recent decision to criminalize consumers
who rip songs from albums they've purchased to their computers (or
iPods), the association has now gone one step further and declared
that remembering songs using your brain is criminal copyright
infringement. The brain is a recording device, explained RIAA
president Cary Sherman. The act of listening is an unauthorized act
of copying music to that recording device, and the act of recalling or
remembering a song is unauthorized playback.
The RIAA also said it would begin sending letters to tens of millions
of consumers thought to be illegally remembering songs, threatening
them with lawsuits if they don't settle with the RIAA by paying
monetary damages. We will aggressively pursue all copyright
infringement in order to protect our industry, said Sherman.
In order to avoid engaging in unauthorized copyright infringement,
consumers will now be required to immediately forget everything
they've just heard ... MORE :-) http://www.newstarget.com/022437.html
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