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Canadian Record Label Fights RIAA Lawsuits

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-gonna-take-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nettwerk Music Group, Canada's leading privately owned record label has joined the fight against the RIAA's strategy of individual lawsuits. Nettwerk CEO Terry McBride says 'Suing music fans is not the solution, it's the problem. Litigation is not "artist development." Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the business I love. The current actions of the RIAA are not in my artists' best interests.'"

5 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Meanwhile, in the UK.... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Informative

    The British Phonographic Industry win a court case against two file sharers, with Judges handing down interim damages of £1,500 and £5,000 with costs and further full damages to be determined at a later hearing.

  2. Self-promotion by Dekortage · · Score: 5, Informative

    The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog (yeah, I wonder who "anonymously" submitted it). Here is the actual news item... err, press release... (as linked to from that blog).

    But it's nice to see that yet another company is telling off the RIAA.

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    1. Re:Self-promotion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's not just anybody's blog, there, buddy. Geist is probably Canada's leading intellectual property expert and is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He's our Larry Lessig.

      So (as we say in Canada), take off, eh!

    2. Re:Self-promotion by djmurdoch · · Score: 4, Informative

      The link in the Slashdot summary goes to someone's blog

      I don't know if Michael Geist submitted the link, but he's actually a pretty well known columnist and copyright activist. You should check out michaelgeist.com for some interesting reading.

      Lately there has been a lot about the Canadian election and the brouhaha over the CRIA (the Canadian RIAA) and friends supporting a candidate who was the author of a pro-business copyright bill, but generally it's a pretty interesting blog. And who knows, he may even have contributed to the electoral loss of that candidate, the minister who sponsored the bill, and the government who brought it in.

  3. Re:Oh, fer cryin' out loud by pla · · Score: 4, Informative

    If they want to join the fight, then they should use their clout and cash to take a more substantive swipe at the RIAA than just a tiny, ineffective gesture.

    Although they have some GREAT artists signed (Delirium, Guster, BT, Paul van Dyk, and of course their "superstars" BNL and Sarah McLachlan), most of whom have a good understanding of technology and its role in music in the modern world... Nettwerk really doesn't have that much sway in the industry overall.

    You can almost think of it more as an artist collective than a real "label".

    As for helping just one out of thousands of victims of the RIAA's SLAPP tactics.. Yes, I agree this counts as little more than a PR stunt. But not a self-promoting PR stunt; rather, it attempts to show that "the music industry" doesn't exist as a uniformly-evil and luddite monolithic entity. It shouts the message "go ahead and boycott Sony, but you can still buy new music without selling your soul to Rosen (Somehow, "Mitch Bainwol" doesn't have the same love-to-hate-him feel as Hilary Rosen...).