His Mixtape's a Masterpiece (Reprise)

Last month I blogged about the bust of leading hip-hop mixtape artist DJ Drama in Atlanta. He and his cohorts were arrested for copyright violations, basically for using copywritten material from other artists to make mixtapes without permission of the copyright holders. Yesterday's New York Times Sunday Magazine had a more in-depth article about DJ Drama, his case, and the entire mixtape phenomenon (which, not being a fan of hip-hop, I know nothing about). The record industry is schizophrenic about mixtapes, with agents/A&R guys using them as a tool to boost their artists' profile, while the suits see them as illegal uses of material for which royalties need to be paid:

Ted Cohen, a former executive at EMI Records who now runs a music-consulting business, told me that the raid was typical of the music industry’s 'schizophrenic' approach to promotions; a label’s marketing department wants to get its artists’ songs in front of as many people as possible, even if it means allowing or ignoring free downloads or unlicensed videos on YouTube. But the business department wants to collect royalties. 'It is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing,' Cohen said.

What seems clear is that the industry's hands need to do some talking, particularly when they run right past civil legal remedies and bring in the local cops to bust the place like it was an operational meth lab:

Late in the afternoon of Jan. 16, a SWAT team from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, backed up by officers from the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office and the local police department, along with a few drug-sniffing dogs, burst into a unmarked recording studio on a short, quiet street in an industrial neighborhood near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The officers entered with their guns drawn; the local police chief said later that they were “prepared for the worst.” They had come to serve a warrant for the arrest of the studio’s owners on the grounds that they had violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, or RICO, a charge often used to lock up people who make a business of selling drugs or breaking people’s arms to extort money. The officers confiscated recording equipment, cars, computers and bank statements along with more than 25,000 music CDs.

Given the force deployed to secure their arrest, DJ Drama and crew should at least count themselves lucky that nobody ended up dead.