p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- Since I started running stories about the P2P file sharing travesty initiated by the major record labels, I’ve had four or five emails complaining about the fact I refer to the perpetrators as the Big 4, the organised music cartel/gang, and so on. And I had another yesterday complaining about that, and the pic I used for Maine students target RIAA ‘discovery’ machine.

Check the pic out, but if you don’t want to be bothered, it features a flock of vultures with the caption, ‘RIAA legal staff mull tactics over lunch’.

Anyway, “You are WRONG!!! - said the email among other things (more on that anon).

“There are a lot more than 4 record labels in the RIAA and they don’t own it, they are only members of it.”

Yes, there are a lot more then four companies listed as members but, “To all intents and purposes, EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) and Warner Music (US) are the only record labels in town,” I wrote a while back, going on >>>

In much the same way Organized Crime is universally known as OC, p2pnet calls the Big 4 the Organized Music cartel.

Because what they say goes. Their demands dictate corporate policy and they’re principally responsible for instructing the many and various ‘trade’ copyright enforcement units such as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), BPI (British Phonographic Industry), IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry) and CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America).”

Recording Industry vs The People has a list of the record labels which show up most often on the RIAA’s Frequent Plaintiff List.

They are: Arista; Atlantic; BMG; Capitol; Elektra; Fonovisa; Interscope; Lava; Loud; Maverick; Motown Priority; SONY; UMG; Virgin; and, Warner.

Separate companies. Right?

Nope. They’re part and parcel of the Big 4.

I did a by no means exhaustive search to see who owned them and here’s what I found:

• Arista is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony BMG
  
• Atlantic is owned by the Warner Music Group
  
• BMG is the German half of the Sony BMG partnership
  
• Capitol is owned by EMI
  
• Elektra is owned by the Warner Music Group
  
• Interscope is owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
  
• Lava is owned by owned by Warner Music Group
  
• Loud is owned by UMG
  
• Priority Records is owned by EMI
  
• Maverick is owned by the Warner Music Group
  
• Motown Priority is owned by Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
  
• SONY is the Japanese half of the Sony BMG partnership
  
• UMG is Vivendi’s Universal Music Group
  
• Virgin Music is owned by EMI
  
• Warner Music Group is Warner Music
  

Only Fonovisa Records, an American Spanish language label, has the slightest appearance of being separate from the Big 4.

It’d be interesting to know exactly how many other companies on the long RIAA list are associated directly or at a distance with one or other of the Big 4.

Meanwhile, to go back to the idea that the Big 4 are the only game in town, in January, Colorado’s Law Weekly ran an article on Richard ‘Rich’ (he probably is by now) Gabriel, the Holme Roberts & Owen RIAA attack lawyer, says a link provided by a p2pnet reader.

Reproduced in full by HR&O, it extols Gabriel’s virtues in fulsome detail (I wouldn’t advise reading it on a full stomach).

It says, in part, “Gabriel’s - and the Recording Industry Association of America’s - case against a Minnesota mother of two has been called one of the most publicized cases in U.S. patent law in 2007. It was the first [and is still the only] case to go to trial against a defendant accused of illegally downloading music on the Internet. The record companies claimed Jammie Thomas, 30, of Brainerd downloaded 1,702 songs to her computer from the music site Kazaa. The record labels then sent Thomas a letter with a settlement offer. But instead of settling for a nominal amount (typically $4,000), Thomas declined.”

Four thousand dollars may be nominal to the multi-billion-dollar Big 4 and to Gabriel, who pulls $375 an hour, plus expenses and disbursements, for his labours of behalf of the organise music gang. But it most certainly isn’t nominal to Thomas or any of the other 30,000 also very ordinary RIAA victims, who include children as young as 12.

But to return to my thesis, me judice, the Big 4 are where it’s at and to all intents and purposes, they alone ultimately control what the various so-called corporate music industry trade associations say and do, and, using the likes of Richard ‘Rich’ Gabriel as their fronts, they alone are responsible for putting their own  customers through hell, calling them criminals and thieves.

“Gabriel serves as national counsel to the recording industry association, as well as the specific record companies involved in the lawsuit, including Capitol Records, Inc., Sony BMG, Arista, Interscope Records, Warner Bros. and UMG Recordings, Inc,” says Law Weekly, from which I clipped a section of Chris Williams’ excellent photo of Gabriel.

• Capitol = EMI
• Arista = Sony BMG
• Interscope Records = Universal Music Group
• Warner = Warner

Say no more.

Jon Newton - p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 11:44 am and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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