The case sees Universal Music Group take on an eBay seller called “Roast Beast Music”. Roast Beast Music buys promo CDs at used record stores and sells them on eBay. In 2008 Roast Beast Music won its case but Universal, undeterred, appealed the decision.

Over the pond in the UK a similar question could be answered shortly.

Earlier this year TorrentFreak learned of raids quietly carried out against members of an Internet release group, a case that is still ongoing. In the course of our investigations into this event we stumbled across another release group whose sources for new material had suddenly and coincidentally dried up. It didn’t take long to work out that both groups somehow had a connection to the same supplier.

Our investigations then led us to look closer at an eBay account which had been offering, amongst other things, promo CDs. The individual behind the ‘popculture4sale’ account clearly had access to a huge number of them and had conducted many thousands of sales through the site.

Armed with the user names of both the seller and some of the buyers we started digging deeper and asking questions, and we were surprised at what we found.

In 2006 a row blew up on an online forum over some unreleased tracks being sold on eBay. Someone interested in finding out who was behind the sales obtained the seller’s address. That address was a perfect match for the contact address provided for ex-MTV executive James Hyman on his personal website.

Hyman began his career at MTV Europe in 1988 as Press Officer but later went on to become Senior Producer, Director and Programmer. His achievements there were impressive.

“From 1988 to 2000, Hyman steered MTV through the emerging UK dance music scene, from its inception (the acid house explosion) right through to its current global multi-million dollar culture. Hyman’s MTV shows featured over 500 in-depth interviews with all the major players, many unknown at time of interview: The Prodigy, Goldie, Moby, David Holmes, Chemical Brothers, Underworld, Paul Oakenfold, Aphex Twin etc,” reads information from Hyman’s personal website.

“Hyman, involved in all aspects of MTV’s playlist strategy & programme production was also responsible for producing, directing and editing over 250 pop videos, including clips for Fatboy Slim, New Order, Mike Oldfield, Moby, Prince & Michael Jackson,” it adds.

The row about promo sales played out on the NuSkoolBreaks forum. However, it seems that Hyman, who had left MTV at the time of the transactions and had joined London’s XFM as a DJ, took exception to having his real name, address and associated eBay account linked in public. Hyman went on to threaten the forum’s administrator with legal action, should he not take down the information. The multi-page thread in question was edited, but not enough to obscure who the discussion was about.

So here we are back in 2010 and it seems that despite the probability that Hyman obtained said promos 100% legitimately and probably had little or zero idea the music would turn up on the Internet, he appears to be in considerable trouble. A source close to Hyman confirmed to TorrentFreak that he became a suspect in the case several months ago and has been answering bail.

In the weeks prior to posting this article TorrentFreak contacted Hyman via his current company website twice and gave him an outline of what we know along with an opportunity to contribute and comment, but we have received no responses.

According to his site, Hyman has a personal media library which includes over one million magazines, in excess of 50,000 vinyl records and more than 50,000 CDs. That’s several lifetimes worth of viewing and listening. Clearing some of them out on eBay seems to make perfect sense – how much music can one person listen to?

But that said, this situation provides much food for thought. If someone legitimately and freely gives a another person an item, should they then be entitled to do with it as they please? With just about any other item on this planet that would be fine. With promo copies of music, it seems to be a different story.

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TMF said it will use the information to signal trends and target their audience.

Initially, TMF announced that it would count downloads from file-sharing networks for their new Superchart, as more people download music than buy it. However, they canceled this plan last week after protests from the music industry, who said it would send out the wrong message.

TMF, however, now say that they will use data from filesharing services as one of the sources for their playlist selection.

Wouter Rutten, the spokesman for the Dutch IFPI said he doesn’t see the use of P2P data as problematic as long as they don’t explicitly use it for their music charts or advertise it in any other way.

The negative reaction from the music industry on the pirate chart was to be expected, but also a little hypocrital. Last year we reported that Interscope Records, and probably other record companies, use P2P data as a marketing tool. They determine which tracks they will release as their next single, based on what people are downloading.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Dawn Barger, manager of the Decemberists says:

For the most part, MTV and VH1 won’t touch video unless bands have sold a huge number of records, it’s impossible to get rotation.”

Publishing a video on BitTorrent, is cheap, easy and efficient. The hardcore fans helped to seed the torrent and within a couple of days the torrent was downloaded more that 2000 times.

Slim Moon, founder of Kill Rock Stars, the Decemberists’ record label responds:

“No matter where you stand on issues of copyright, a network like BitTorrent is really for exactly this kind of thing When you have content that you want to freely distribute, it seems like … the most logical way to distribute.”

The video for “Sixteen Military Wives” was shot for less than $6,000 at a high school in Portland, Oregon, and features members of the band participating in a Model United Nations, a simulation popular in high schools to teach students about problem-solving and international relations. In the video, Decemberists singer Colin Meloy represents the United States and boldly declares war on Luxembourg, a not-so-subtle jab at the Bush administration’s decision to go to war.

By the way, their album “Castaways and Cutouts” probably looks familiar to most people in the BitTorrent community.

grab the torrent

Wired article

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