It’s never a good thing when the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has you in their sights. The company’s approach to copyright enforcement, historically, hasn’t been fantastic. But when the fight is between folks turning music into NFTs (without permission) and record industry dillweeds, it becomes hard to know who to root for.
See, the RIAA is after a website called HitPiece. The company recently shut itself down but the RIAA still wants a piece of the action. See, HitPiece billed itself as a marketplace where folks could buy music-related NFTs. This might be a good idea (somewhere in the universe) but it usually requires getting permission to use the music first.
A HitPiece on NFTs
Of course, we wouldn’t be here if the crypto bros behind HitPiece had done an elementary thing like asking for permission. After being called out by numerous music artists (whose intellectual property was being minted and sold without permission), the project was shut down. More or less.
The HitPiece saga is quite an experience. The company explained that “…artists get paid when digital goods are sold on HitPiece”. In other words, the music artists who were unaware of their involvement in the project would make money from NFTs minted from their songs. Somehow. HitPiece didn’t explain what sort of mechanism would enable this. Presumably, every music artist on the planet would have to sign up to HitPiece to get their payout. Somebody, somewhere, thought this would be a marketing triumph. It wasn’t.
But, before the service was shut down like the terrible idea that it is, the company sold a batch of NFTs. The RIAA, like all sharks, can smell a royalty payment several kilometres away. The organisation is demanding that HitPiece cease using artists’ IPs. It’s also asking pointed questions about what was earned from sales of NFTs. We’re not sure if the organisation just wants a cut, or if they’re trying to find out how much to sue the NFT boosters for.
The industry watchdog is keen on making sure this doesn’t happen again. The RIAA’s head legal person, Ken Doroshow, said, “While the operators appear to have taken the main HitPiece site offline, for now, this move was necessary to ensure a fair accounting for the harm HitPiece and its operators have already done and to ensure that this site or copycats don’t simply resume their scams under another name.”
*They’re not actually fearsome. Don’t worry kids, the RIAA won’t do anything to you. It’s not like LimeWire still exists.