Paul Haig Day
Who knew in this day and age we blog folk would be going 1969 on your ass and staging a sit-in? Let’s pluck some flowers, get out the LSD and spread the free love, baby!
Okay, perhaps we won’t go that far. Allergies, day jobs, STDs and all that. Still, there are times when you need to make your voice heard loud and clear, regardless of whether anyone is listening. In this particular instance, we’d hope the record labels affiliated with the RIAA are listening, because whatever it was the RIAA was supposed to be doing for you and whatever artists’ rights it was supposed to be protecting, it seems to have long ago lost its way. Now it shuts down blogs *legally* reposting mp3s offered by labels & PR, and in some cases even those directly offered by the artist themselves!
Of course, the RIAA and labels aren’t the only ones we hope prick up their ears. Free service Blogger – which has been around forever and was certainly instrumental in a great many blogs starting out – and its parent company Google have recently taken to removing entire posts from their hosted blogs, without so much as a warning. In many cases, the posts removed contained perfectly legal live recordings available elsewhere courtesy of the artists or labels. Among the victims of this unnecessary and TOS-violating abuse was blog buddy Muruch, who is still recovering in terms of visitor traffic and the expense involved in switching services. When you’re shutting down the most legal of legal blogs out there, something has gone horribly wrong.
So what does all of this have to do with former Josef K lead singer Paul Haig? A short time ago, musical archaeologist and enthusiast JC a.k.a. The Vinyl Villain posted ‘Blue For You’, an early solo single by Paul. This was done after JC actually contacted Paul and had his blessing to post the track, along with a snippet about the writing of the song from Paul himself. Less than 48 hours later, the track had been removed by JC’s ISP, even though no one who actually held the copyright to the tune made any request to have it removed. Paul responded by immediately making another song from his back catalog, ‘Reason’ (appropriate, no?), available for download. So far, no one has had it removed, but it’s nothing I’d place bets on given the current state of affairs.
In response to this absurd and abusive use of power, a number of blogs have joined together and decided to post the single Paul made available as a sign of solidarity and something of a message for anyone who might be listening – we need this copyright/DMCA/RIAA/BPI/Blogger business sorted out sooner rather than later. Blogs like ours are not here to destroy copyright or bankrupt musicians. We do this because we love music, and music discovery has changed with the advent of the internet. We hope to be instrumental in someone finding out about an artist they’d have otherwise never have heard, whether it’s someone currently producing music or a band from yesteryear who’ve been unfairly forgotten. We don’t log in to our respective blogs and think ‘Who can I ruin today?’, we log in and think ‘Who can I share this experience with?’.
With that in mind, here’s the excellent single off of Paul’s 2007 album, Elektronic Audience. Listen, share, enjoy and support the artist, both monetarily and with personal expressions of appreciation for his work on his Myspace or perhaps on your own blog. And by all means, if you’ve never heard of Josef K, head over to JC’s blog and read an excellent and thorough history of the band and Paul, as well as a list of other blogs featuring him today.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
How infuriating this must be to PR firms and labels trying to promote their artists and new releases, only to get shot in the foot by the very entity that’s supposed to protect them. Tell me again how this is all supposed to be about artist’s rights?
Crap, was April 6th Paul Haig day? I feel like I missed out and would’ve contributed.
I’m sorry, Allan! I should have cc’d you on this.
I didn’t know about Paul Haig Day until I started seeing my site’s name tossed around in connection with it. Thanks for the support! It’s still frustrating that I wasted so much time fighting that battle (and lost so many readers in the process) without changing a thing, even after Google admitted the claims against me were false and reinstated my posts.
I won’t recount the whole saga here, but the one thing I did learn from Google/Blogger is that most of the claims (including those against me) were filed by IFPI as representatives of EMI, who does distribution in the UK for many American indie labels. So even though I had clear authorization from the American indie label (who held the copyright) for the mp3, the post got flagged by IFPI because the artist was on whatever list they got from EMI. Despite my disapproval Blogger’s practices (they should set the posts to draft rather than delete since they aren’t verifying the claims), the root of the problem is the lack of communication between the labels, distributors, and enforcement agencies.