it's not all bad! (Re: Re[2]: [sdiy] TCPA / Palladium -- more trouble for DIYers & hardware hackers)

[Rude 66]

ah, the Rolando story..;-)

the track (knights of the jaguar) was officially released through
Underground Resitstance, and was quite an 'underground' hit because it
really is a very good track. Sony wanted to license it, but they refused:
they are strictly indies from detroit; there's a whole story behind the
label that's all over the web.. anyway, sony germany's a&r guy decided that
he could 'cover' the track, or have it done by someone else, and then
release it. when the promos came out, UR, who are sort of gods in serious
techno circles, called in the troops and set up a protest action which got a
lot of attention on the net and in magazines. my guess is sony realized they
were doing more damage than good, and pulled the release. the original track
was eventually licensed out to various big european indies and made the
charts in some countries. it's actually one of the few stories where the
little guy wins..;-)

r./


> On the other hand, it was a different story when Sony ripped off that
> independent techno guy. (Names escape me for now but I'm sure someone will
> be able to fill me in.) Essentially what happened was some guy in Europe
(I
> think) did this techno song and for some reason it became really popular.
I
> don't even think it was released on a label or anything but he had a minor
> hit on his hands. A few weeks later, Sony released a clone of it by some
> un-knowns they'd cobbled together somewhere and were promoting the shit
out
> of it. No-one know's what Sony's motivation was for trying to fuck this
> poor bastard over like that but you can probably make a good guess.
> Eventually someone got behind this guy and called Sony out. I forget what
> sony's lame-assed excuse was but it was pathetic. No reparations were
> offered and the damage was done.
>