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

Criminal Liability?

[Garrett Fox]

If that's so, could the RIAA be hauled into criminal court for conspiracy to commit piracy?

Re:Zappa

[Neuropol]

My initial impression: Entrapment And since when does the RIAA get to act like feds and be part of a raid? The boundaries of law enforcement between the record industry seem to be heavily blurred if this is happening. Sounds like the RIAA wants to do a little too much CSI role playing in these setups. I'm imagining little numbered paper tents on tape reels, ziplock bags with drink straws and beer caps, carbon dust on mixing console faders, etc. This is a ridiculous waste of time and money. Who pays for this? Is this tax payer money being thrown at the desire to feel badass in a dark blue jacket with yellow letters on the back? All for the sake of abolishing the spread of entertainment. so. over. it. GET A NEW HOBBY.

Re:Misleading

[1point618]

I completely agree. However, the RIAA did do something scummy: they're leaving BestBuy and other distributors be, free to continue selling the same CD's. Also, previously the DJ's felt that there was sort of a "you help us, we won't go after you" feeling towards the whole deal, that is no longer present.

Off topic: my favorite part of the article was when one of the rappers interviewed said he didn't support mixtapes, by which he meant he bought and listened to them (of course) but didn't like it when his material was used. It seems to me that it's greed and hypocrisy like this that permeates the RIAA and major labels. I guess that's normal for capitalism, and why I'm all for creating laws that protect citizens from the corporations as much as we have them to protect us from the government.

"Overkill" by Radley Balko

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the past several years, Radley Balko (formerly with the Cato Institute, now an editor at Reason), has documented the increasing frivolous mis-use of SWAT teams.

Last year, he published his findings in a book called "Overkill" (page here, direct link to free copy in 2 MB PDF here).

Also, check out his blog at TheAgitator.com , and his posts at Reason's blog.

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

Brilliant decision. Just brilliant.

[Phanatic1a]

The RIAA does this thing enough times, they're going to kill someone.

The routine use of paramilitary police raids for nonviolent offenders gets people killed on a routine basis. Three cops are now on trial for murder in Atlanta because they raided a house, killed an innocent old lady, and then lied after the fact to establish a bogus justification for the warrant. Police in Virginia raided a dentist's house for records related to illegal gambling, and one of the cops violated the two first laws of firearms safety and shot him dead when he tripped with his fucking finger on the trigger.

The steady flow of federal dollars for "homeland security" has exacerbated a problem which was started by the War on Some Drugs: incompetent, ill-trained paramilitary police forces who are both encouraged to "prepare for the worst" and given access to powerful weaponry. The result is a bunch of corpses. Corpses of innocent people, non-violent offenders, and even cops. The nature of unannounced no-known raids turns non-violent, low-stress situations into violent and stressful ones, with predictable results. In many of these cases (like the aforementioned dentist), regular cops showing up, knocking on the door, and serving a warrant, would be sufficient to perform the desired search. But when a dozen cops burst through the door with guns drawn, people get killed.

The RIAA instigates enough of these raids, the RIAA are going to kill someone. For copyright violation. It's just a matter of time.