Music to their ears: Artists pleased alleged music bootlegger shut down
Last Updated: Friday, March 7, 2008 | 11:18 AM ET
CBC News
Canadian musicians and songwriters are applauding an RCMP raid on a company accused of being a modern-day pirate operation and one of the biggest music bootleggers in Canadian history.
RCMP investigators raided the Winnipeg-based shop of Audiomaxxx.com on Wednesday and seized 200,000 CDs and DVDs as well as computers, label-making machines and burning towers capable of copying 11,500 discs a day.
"We're looking at cube vans and U-Hauls worth of CD and computer equipment. It's a lot," RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Line Karpish said.
The material seized included recordings by big-name artists such as Nelly Furtado and Shania Twain, but also smaller artists, the RCMP said. The RCMP's three-year investigation began after the Canadian Recording Industry Association received a flood of complaints.
Association president Graham Henderson estimated one-third of all the pirated music in Toronto may have originated from Audiomaxxx.com. The bootlegged goods were also being shipped to North and Central America, Europe and the Caribbean, according to an RCMP news release.
"The largest seizure that I can remember was about 10,000 discs seized from a commercial operation in Toronto a year ago. This was 20 times as big," Henderson said.
Independent producers and smaller record labels, including some from the Caribbean, played a big part in pushing the industry and the police to investigate, Henderson said, because their market was being undercut by the material made in Canada.
There has been big buzz about the bust at Canadian Music Week, the country's international music conference, taking place in Toronto this week, he added. "At all levels, I'm getting high fives.
"This was striking at the livelihoods of independents and music publishers and songwriters, as well as the Celine Dions and Sean Pauls of the world. They're very, very pleased," he said.
Music products 'devalued': artist
Keri Latimer, Winnipeg-based singer-songwriter with the alt-country quartet Nathan, was happy to hear an alleged pirating operation had been shut down.
But the success of such companies is a sign of the times, she said.
"Kids that are downloading music, they're used to doing that for free," she said. "I think it's hard to change that sort mindset — once you're used to doing it, you can't see anything wrong with it."
Winnipeg musician Steve Bell, who co-owns Signpost Music, agreed, saying he doesn't think people value music as much as they once did.
"I think more and more music products are being devalued, and that's really frustrating, especially for small producers, guys like me who are trying to make a living off of selling tens of thousands of CDs, not hundreds of thousands," he said.
"Basically a company like that couldn't survive if people weren't wanting a lot for a little, and that kind of mentality is hurting a lot of people."
Lindsay Gillespie, who owns a company in Toronto that manufactures CDs for independent artists and labels, said the income lost to music piracy is crucial to many of his clients.
"The amount of money that they can make at the merchandise table ... can mean the difference between a hotel room and sleeping in the van, " he said.
Charges are pending against a 31-year-old Winnipeg man, and police are investigating three other individuals.
The Audiomaxxx.com website was not working Thursday evening, and the company's owner and his family did not return phone calls.
Under Canada's Copyright Act, it is illegal to copy CDs and DVDs for sale, rent, distribution or public exhibition without the copyright owner's permission. It is legal, however, to make copies of music recordings for the copier's private use.
With files from The Canadian Press
