[78-L] oBoo turning a blind eye to bootlegs?

[Michael Biel]

The fall into the same category as LP issues by non-successor companies
of unissued sides and unissued  alternate takes of, for example, Bix or
Benny.  If Columbia or Victor issues them, or perhaps Mossaic which has
licensed them from the original company, that is one thing, but if any
other company issues them for the first time from a collector's find of
a test pressing, that is no different from a studio test of Ozzie
Osborne or Kiss.  Issued alternate takes are different.  We're talking
about unissued materials.  

Benny Goodman, a noted curmudgeon, is noted to have said that he
disliked the issuing of unissued alternate takes because there must have
been some reason for them to have been rejected in the first place.  Of
course, that is not true.  In most cases it was a situation of having
two or three takes but only one could be issued.  They picked what was,
perhaps, the overall best of the three, or perhaps one of three equally
good takes but only one could be issued.  Sometimes there was difference
of opinion.  Take one was better in this place, but take two was better
in the other place.  In the case of Benny Goodman, I bet the one where
HIS solo was better would be issued even though in another take his solo
was ordinary but someone else's was phenomenal.  

oBoo's  policy is based on the RIAA's scheme of intermixing counterfeit,
pirate, and bootleg issues into one category to confuse the consumer and
the law officers.  While they are at it, they also drag in promo and DJ
copies.  Prior to their campaign suing grandmothers without computers
for downloading, the RIAA's theory was that counterfeit records were
trafficed by the mob, and that they were also responsible for pirates
and bootlegs.  There is even a book about it "Stiffed: A True Story of
MCA, the Music Business, and the Mafia" by William Knoedelseder.  When
you read it you find that the crimes really centered around CUT-OUTS,
not bootlegs!  Counterfeits were the second main problem, but pirates
and bootlegs were minor league.  Presumed members of the mob were
dealing in million disc lots of MCA/Decca cut-outs, and companies like
Roulette and Sugar Hill were dragged into it.  This book reads like a
comedy like "The Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight" if it weren't so
serious and so many lives unnecessarily ruined.  It really was more like
a bunch of small-time middle-aged show biz hangers-on who were out to
make a fast buck on a tractor trailer load of old Brenda Lee and Jack
Jones LPs, rather than deal in cocaine, fake purses, or Tommy Helfinger
T-shirts.  

But the result was that the RIAA started convincing prosecuters that the
guys making 50 copies of a concert recording or dub of a studio master
reel were part of the Mafia feeding your kids with heroin (when really
it was the CIA that was trafficing in it).  They also like to scare the
powers that be into believing your white-label DJ copies are illegal. 
But because they often give away "Not For Sale" promos to the GENERAL
PUBLIC (look at the front cash register counters of record stores and
you will often find some free CDs so marked) and because things they
have sold things to the general public for $1.00 like the old
Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders marked "Promo", they have lost the battle
against selling promos in the secondary market whenever they are called
on it.  

oBoo might be ignoring you because they are sick and tired of the RIAA's
lies. I know I am.  Only Ozzie Osborne and Kiss can prove that these LPs
are unauthorized.  How do you know that these were not issued by THEM? 
How do you know that they did not give a bunch away to friends?  How do
you know that they did not sell them at concerts?  Unless you can prove
that these specific items are unauthorized, they might be legal.    

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com          



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [78-L] oBoo turning a blind eye to bootlegs?
From: agp <agp2176 at verizon.net>
Date: Tue, December 22, 2009 5:13 am
To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>

At 01:31 22/12/2009, SB wrote:
>Probably not a lot?! These "bootlegs" are generally unofficial/illicit
>private
>recordings of live performances...meaning they aren't technically illegal
>except in terms of copyright laws...and it is open to question who...if
>indeed anybody...is actually losing money they might otherwise have
>made...?!

Problem 1 is that some of the listed records are studio demos not 
in-concert performances. Be that as it may for all the historical 
reasons pointed out about the historical importance of such things, 
the point is that eBay has a specific policy about such things and it 
is being ignored.

T