"Music Journalism is the New Piracy"

Music Journalism is the New Piracy | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

In the latest signal of this conundrum, at least six music blogs were deleted last week by Blogger due to copyright complaints. It's uncertain who made the accusations that lead to the deletions, but the most likely culprit is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a copyright-enforcement organization which had previously filed copright takedown notices against some of the targeted blogs.

Although the takedowns were made in the name of stopping piracy, the deleted blogs do not appear to have been hotbeds of illegal file-sharing. Indeed, some had operated for years and acquired a serious and substantial readership. Like many music blogs and magazines, they mostly posted reviews of artists, albums and concerts.

In at least one case, IFPI's accusations of copyright infringement were almost certainly incorrect. Bill Lipold, author of the deleted I Rock Cleveland, has outlined in painstaking detail the ways in which he received explicit permission to post every file on his blog, including ones which were later accused of infringement and forcibly removed. In one case, the band's publicist wrote of the takedown, "Just so you know, this is none of our doing...apparently, DMCA operate on their own set of odd rules, as they even requested that the (band's) official blog remove the song....What a headache..."

The music industry is slowing killing itself, as more and more musicians are using the web for self-promotion and telling the industry to go **** itself.