RIAA Hires Artists, Then Sends In the SWAT team

cancan writes "The NY times is carrying an article about how the RIAA is hiring hip hop artists to make mix tapes, and then helping the police raid their studios. In the case of DJ Drama and DJ Don Cannon, they were raided by SWAT teams with their guns drawn. The local police chief said later that they were 'prepared for the worst.' Men in RIAA jackets helped cart away 'evidence'. Just the same, 'Record labels regularly hire mixtape D.J.'s to produce CDs featuring a specific artist. In many cases, these arrangements are conducted with a wink and a nod rather than with a contract; the label doesn't officially grant the D.J. the right to distribute the artist's songs or formally allow the artist to record work outside of his contract.' " This is more of the shenanigans that we've previously discussed on the site.

Comments

entrapment

[tdos20]

nuff said

And of course, the accused are black.

[Fantastic Lad]

The only thing surprising here is that the RIAA have their own emergency task force jackets. If that had appeared in a Neal Stephenson novel, I'd have rolled my eyes.

Honestly, everything is growing so increasingly weird now that pretty much every day I run across one or more items which simply shouldn't exist because they are written too far over the top to be real. And yet, there they are.

Neal Stephenson is obviously smarter than me. But I don't have to like it!

-FL