so bart peterson won, but that's not why i feel so disgusted.

fox 59 advertised that they were doing a "special report" on the 10o'clock news about the private investigator who's been casing local record stores on the behalf of the RIAA. some of you might already know that the RIAA (with IPD) has been raiding local record stores & confiscating all their mix tapes, despite the fact that the industry tacitly endorses mix tapes. so needless to say i wanted to see the report, as well as tape it for possible sampling.

naturally, since they'd been advertising this report, they waited until the end to show it. it was filmed at luna records (86 & ditch location), & included an interview with luna's todd robinson as well as the music spy, don finch.

the issue was framed as being about piracy: the real kind of piracy, not online downloading but bulk illicit duplication of cds that look & sound pretty much like the "real thing." they showed an example of a pirate beyonce cd that admittedly looked much like the original (at least over the tv), although they did not explicitly say where the cd actually came from (it is implied that the spy found it on luna's shelves; in one scene robinson is seen opening a cd & saying "i'm not surprised").

finally they got around to the mix cd issue: "finch says so-called dj mixes have become one of the most popular counterfeit products on the black market. the mixes include hit songs by popular artists, including some, like rapper 50 cent, who endorse them." then they immediately change the subject back to piracy in general.

so that's it. dj mixes are just another counterfeit product. never mind the hard work & skill that the dj has to put into making the mixes. & let's just ignore the fact that the labels happily give music to the djs specifically so it will be included in these mixes. the people who put out dj mixes are just pirates, & you know what kinds of people get into cd piracy: organized crime. hey, they must be evil! so sayeth fox 59. hang the dj.