[ARSCLIST] Fw: RIAA Raid puts Rockville, MD used-record haven in jeopardy: Wash CP

[Dick Spottswood <dick@xxxxxxxx>]

----- Forwarded by Dick Spottswood/dick/AmericanU on 11/16/2004 08:10 PM 
-----


Harriswray1@xxxxxxx
11/16/2004 01:28 PM
 
        To:     dick@xxxxxxxx
        cc: 
        Subject:        RIAA Raid puts Rockville, MD used-record haven in 
jeopardy: Wash CP


District Line: Bootlegged Out (979 words)

Most days, it isn’t hard for a scruffy music nut like Tim Shea to find a 
heavenly moment or two surrounded by the tens of thousands of albums at 
Joe’s Record Paradise.
Friday, Oct. 22, however, wasn’t one of those days: The 19-year-old 
employee of Joe’s, a used-record store in a hardly arcadian strip-mall 
storefront in north Rockville, was organizing newly arrived CDs when about 
a half-dozen cops burst into the store.
“We were kinda like, the hell’s this?” says Shea. The cops, dressed in 
boots and bulletproof vests, demanded the store’s keys and sternly asked 
customers to leave.
“We really had no idea [what was going on]. It made no sense,” says 
Johnson Lee, another employee. “They said, ‘We’re looking for illegal 
recordings....Point us to your live imports or bootlegs or we’ll tear this 
place apart. We have authority to seize everything here.’”
Adding to the confusion was the raiders’ affiliation: They weren’t feds. 
They weren’t even Montgomery County’s finest. They were vice cops from 
Baltimore.
Four hours later, the cops were gone, along with 115 CDs mostly by ’60s 
and ’70s rock acts, a computer, an address book, and $841 authorities said 
were associated with bootleg sales. Police simultaneously raided Joe’s 
Record Paradise’s second location, in northeast Baltimore, seizing 66 
recordings and more than $1,300.
The seized records weren’t copies of the latest Good Charlotte or Kanye 
West albums. Those would be pirated or counterfeit CDs—illegal copies of 
officially released titles—none of which Joe’s carried. The seized CDs 
were bootlegs, amateur recordings of unreleased radio or live 
performances, which are often of borderline sound quality.
Joe Lee, who founded his stores in 1974, remembers an era where 
unscrupulous record-store owners would set up a “back room” to peddle 
bootlegs from the top bands of the day. “Those days have been over a long 
time,” Lee says. The bootlegs at Joe’s come in with record and CD 
collections; depending on their rarity, Lee says, he sometimes pays a 
premium for them.
Today, Internet trading has rendered the once-thriving tape trade nearly 
obsolete. Lee’s inventory reflects that: Of upward of 150,000 items per 
store, authorities seized fewer than 200 bootlegs altogether. Of those, 
Lee says most were of dinosaur-rock acts—the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Bob 
Dylan—or of more contemporary jam bands that encourage live taping. “Half 
of the recordings sounded terrible. It’s for collectors who want every 
little thing,” he says.
According to the warrant that police presented at the raids, an 
investigator from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) 
initially discovered bootlegs at the store’s Baltimore location and 
approached that city’s police, who bought several to obtain the warrant. 
After learning about the Rockville location from the Joe’s Web site, an 
undercover Baltimore cop bought live recordings of Led Zeppelin and Phish 
concerts from the Rockville store. The raids soon followed.
Until the mid-’90s, the RIAA regularly issued press releases touting mass 
bootleg seizures; today, such events are rarely mentioned, supplanted by 
the organization’s high-profile battles against Internet pirates and 
counterfeiters. The numbers bear out the decrease: Last year, authorities 
seized nearly 200,000 fewer bootlegs than in 2002—a decline of more than 
80 percent—while seizing hundreds of thousands more counterfeits, 
according to RIAA figures.
Still, in recent years, the law has gotten tougher on bootleggers as 
legislators have mandated ever-expanding terms of copyright protection. 
The law once protected live recordings for a maximum of 28 years; today, 
works are protected 70 years after an artist’s death.
The legal foundation for such extended protections, however, may be 
crumbling: In late September, a federal judge in New York threw out 
charges against a record-store owner dealing bootlegs similar to the ones 
Joe’s carried, citing unlawful regulations that granted “seemingly 
perpetual protection” to musical recordings. The federal ruling does 
nothing to help Lee, whose stores were raided under Maryland state law.
Brad Buckles, the RIAA’s executive vice president for anti-piracy, says 
though bootleg raids have gotten less media attention in the face of the 
“sexier” Internet prosecutions, they are still a problem. Buckles says the 
problem lies mainly with dealers “trying to replace what’s real hot, 
what’s coming out.” He declined to comment on the specifics of Lee’s case.
Lee says the raid is particularly ironic given that he’s dealt in bootlegs 
not just with private collectors, but also with the government—the Library 
of Congress, in particular. Last year, library officials approached Lee 
about trading some unused materials. “[They said], ‘We’re looking for 
bootlegs—we need live recordings,’” Lee says. It all goes, in Lee’s view, 
to the ubiquitousness, the banality of the bootleg; more than once, Lee 
claims bootlegs are “no big deal.”
Big deal or not, Buckles still thinks bootleg prosecutions are important: 
“It may not be a huge economic impact to one of the major labels, but if 
you’re the band...These people are stealing....I don’t want to give the 
impression this is innocent conduct.”
Two weeks after the raid, many remain in the store, by Lee’s own 
admission. “My stores will never be purged of bootlegs,” Lee says, noting 
that they come in so many various forms it can be hard to distinguish 
between them and legitimate recordings. “People aren’t threatened by 
bootlegs,” he says.
His business, however, is. Another area raid target, Baltimore’s Sound 
Garden, was fined $15,000 after a similar raid in 1998. The RIAA hasn’t 
yet approached Lee about a possible settlement; if or when it does, he 
doesn’t plan to hire a lawyer. He’s having second thoughts on re-signing 
his lease in Rockville. A hefty fine, Lee says, may force him to cancel 
his employees’ health insurance, which he refuses to do. “If I have to 
spend $15,000 to settle, $20 grand for a lawyer”—Lee stops and waves. 
“Sayonaro. I’ve put in my 30 years.”
“I just don’t feel I’ve hurt the Beatles or Led Zeppelin,” he says. “Maybe 
I’m one of those sociopath types.”

Mike DeBonis - Washington City Paper  November 12, 2004