Mixtapes & the Law

Posted by lukegilman

January 18, 2007

From the NY Times: With Arrest of DJ Drama, the Law Takes Aim at Mixtapes

On Tuesday night [DJ Drama] was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.

DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.

I’m not all that in to the hip-hop scene myself, but I wonder if people of a certain generation realize how ludicrous this appears to our own? What these DJs do is not piracy, viewed from any sane policy angle, and as the RIAA will discover eventually, culture trumps law.

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