Somebody you don’t know
can send you something you never asked for,
and you are now obliged to keep it—
not only can you not sell it, but
but you can never give away, either, apparently—
because of a warning on the object itself,
proclaiming an arrangement
that you never agreed to,
out of a fear of what someone else,
whom you likely will never meet,
might eventually do with it?

I’ve been in a similar situation, when a flunkie at the plant that printed the magazine I worked for got online and spilled details of a carefully timed, exclusive cover story for one of our sister publications. Let me tell you: It sucks.

Davis screwed up. It may have been an entirely honest mistake, but it was his mistake. His argument seems to be that if the label hadn’t taken steps to prevent early release of their product, they wouldn’t be so upset by his releasing the product into the wild.

Well, yeah. That’s obvious. It’s also ludicrous. His early release — accidental though it may have been — does a disservice to the artist, the label, and any other reviewer or other industry person who will now have to deal with even more draconian copy prevention.

It’s not the end of the world for any of these parties, but Davis ought to be a bit more apologetic. Railing against the system when you’ve screwed up seems a bit childish.

It sounds like Erik Davis violated the norms of the label/reviewer community by too-blatantly selling the promo CD. Perhaps, as a consequence, the label will stop sending him advance copies. Perhaps Mr Davis will be ostracized. Perhaps the same things would happen if he wrote too many negative reviews. It’s not a legal matter.

1) Don’t you agree to the EULA by USING THE PRODUCT?

2) you’re anonymous.

Besides fining the shit out of him, they reclaimed all of the promotional CDs and videos he had amassed over the years. It really sucked, but he was kind of stupid to openly host the entire Nine Inch Nails audio and video collection, free for the download.

So yeah, those labels on promo CDs? Not entirely empty threats.

The “but then you might not get into some press outlets” is lame, and powerless. They will route around you like damage, sir.

And *you* feel wronged by the label?

For advance copies, though, I agree with the others that watermarking is sensible thing to do…

Believe me, I know how hectic things can get preparing for the playa. Hell, in my early burning days, I used to gift ancient promos out there. (not the easiest thing in the world to do, actually.) But these are different days, and it’s fuckups like this that give record labels greater reason to shrug us off as the anachronistic remnants of another era that we now are.

Quite frankly, who needs us anymore? Do you honestly need to follow a Lester Bangs wannabe to tell you what’s cool when the entirety of music history is immediately available on Myspace, Wikipedia and your average MP3 blog? The ONLY role we play in a record’s release is as pawns in a big marketing plan at this point. And Ben Goldberg doesn’t hold the copyrights to massive back catalogs like the Beatles or the Beach Boys. He’s living from release to release, and a screwup like this can cost him his job, so it’s better for him to get something, ANYTHING out of what just happened to him than to just hemorrhage silently for your sake, Erik. Hiding behind the aegis of “righteous publications like Arthur” is a rather shallow defense for what you unwittingly did to his business.

I’ve often maintained that the burden should be on the music industry to devise a system that stops treating its artists like slaves and its consumers like criminals, considering the evils they’ve enacted on both. But that doesn’t let music journalists off the hook either. We can be just as corrupt and careless as well. So I’d say Erik got off pretty easy at this point. He’s a part of the industry too whether he likes it or not, and as such, he needs to understand the rules of engagement a little bit better next time.

You must be new here. See: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/25/reasonableagreemento.html

Anyway, EULA’s have never been shown to mean anything in a US court of law.

To take the analogy of the speeding driver further, imagine a driver going 39 in 40 mph zone, and is pulled over by a car with home-made flashing lights. The “police” get out and say “did you know you were going over 35 mph?” The driver admits going over 35, but points out the limit is 40, not 35. The driver also points out that putting home-made flashing lights on one’s car and pulling over other drivers does not make one a police officer.

This may be true, but it is not up for him to decide – that’s the copyright owner’s call. Davis messed up pretty bad, and by all rights, he _should_ receive far fewer pre-release review CDs. That’s the whole point of watermarking to begin with – identify the leaks, so you can plug them. (Which, by the way, also happened on vinyl releases).

It scares me to think that people would lump this in with DRM or other ‘loss prevention’ mechanisms – this is an indie label with quite a bit to lose as a result of an entire album leak.

It’s tough enough to make a living in music without the very folks who can make your business (i.e., reviewers) breaking it before you even get a chance.

And re-read the article everyone. It wasn’t about the cd. The dude was at Burning Man! On a fire truck! Shooting flames!

Where were you?

It doesn’t change the remainder of the argument much, but does weaken your discussion – misunderstanding that point so fundamentally brings into question your comprehension of the rest of the issues.

Christovir, the sign said 35, and the driver was going 70 and he knew it. There was just a copy in a speed trap under the overpass.

Be sure to read to the bottom of Erik’s story about the Knopfler CD – I think my reaction would have been to write NO on the CD with a sharpie and mail it back to Warner’s.