Cc: CNBC, Reuters, Rolling Stone, The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press (AP), The Membrane Domain, Rev. LeRoy Montana, Mark Hammel (OpSec.net), ACLU, San Diego Union Tribune, LA Times
dear c. williams,
pursuant to my recent email, an article appears in this weeks music section of the CNET.com website. (see below)
i am also starting to question whether MP3.com's activities would fall under the anti-trust laws (since their behavior coincides with the takeover by Vivendi Universal.)
thank you. i shall await your advice.
sincerely,
digital yoda
http://music.cnet.com/music/0-1652424-8-6160236-2.html?tag=st.mu.1652424-8- 6160236-1.txt.1652424-8-6160236-2
It all started when a band named KingArthur.com posted a song called "What Went Wrong (with MP3.com)," which was a critique of the online music company, on its actual MP3.com page . According to band member digital yoda, MP3.com deleted KingArthur.com's page on MP3.com at the beginning of May, kept the money owed to the group, and "destroyed [his] accounting records." Evidently, the song in question was the last in a series of experiments designed to test the limits of what the company would allow on its site. First, MP3.com "started censoring the way [he] used their logo. Then, they censored a song because it had a famous third person in the title. Finally, they censored the whole site, cuz it said something they didn't like." Now, I know that MP3.com reserves the right to remove material from its site at its own discretion, but wouldn't it have been sort of big of the company to allow this sort of thing to be posted on its site? I understand why MP3.com removed the song; after all, the band's logo itself was the words MP3.com with a red slash through them. But MP3.com had an opportunity to show the kind of fortitude that you would never see from the major-label system, and it would have been nice if the company had set an example. When I called MP3.com for a comment, the company was unable to find someone who had dealt with the case in time for this story to post.
The takeaway:
