Email to Columbia (& Sony BMG)
This is an email to a gentleman introduced to myself as the ‘MD of Columbia’ by the person who suggested I write him an email about the whole 17 Seconds Glasvegas fiasco. Here is what I wrote. Comments, anyone?
Dear XXXX,
I was given your email by XXXX who, having read the following post on my site, thought it would be a good thing if I got in touch with you personally regarding Glasvegas and DMCA notices issued in their name.
http://songbytoad.com/2008/10/23/dont-be-evil/
I don’t know how much you know about this, but DMCA notices are being wielded against bloggers completely indiscriminately at the moment, and as you can tell from that post people are both angry and afraid. Now, to be absolutely clear, I do not intend this to be an antagonistic email, nor am I getting in touch simply in order to shake my fist and point fingers. I genuinely would rather find an amicable solution to this situation, and I genuinely believe that the vast majority of music blog writers feel the same way. At the time I was angry, and wrong on some basic facts, but there are nevertheless a lot of things which I think need addressing and I appreciate you taking the time to read this email.
Basically, many people are having pages of their music blogs indiscriminately removed by people wielding false DMCA notices in the direction of Google and Wordpress, who host most of the blogs. In the case described in my post, a fellow Edinburgh blogger had his interview with Glasvegas from January this year erased because of old and expired links to recordings given to him freely by the band at the time. Writing a huge long interview with an unsigned band and posting their demo recordings with permission is absolutely not the behaviour of a copyright pirate, and the fact that Columbia has chosen to pursue Ed is frankly disgraceful, in my opinion. Read the rest of this entry »
