Anti-Piracy Watchdogs Take It To The Comments Section

We were excited to see a few new Dinosaur Jr. tracks pop up on the Hype Machine, but when we clicked through to Faronheit–the site that was hosting the MP3s–we’d seen that the tracks had already been removed, thanks to the anti-piracy SWAT team known as the Web Sheriff (you might remember this organization from last fall, when they tried to prevent the Shins’ Wincing The Night Away from leaking on to the blogs–and we all know how well that went). Anyway, what’s interesting to note is that the Sheriff posted the cease & desist in Faronheit’s comments section–a practice that’s apparently been going on for a while now.

Here’s the letter as it was printed:

Web Sheriff Protecting Your Rights on the Internet Tel 44-(0)208-323 8013 / Fax 44-(0)208-323 8080 websheriff@websheriff.com www.websheriff.com

Dear Faronheit,

Kindly remove the unreleased Dinosaur Jr tracks from your site IMMEDIATELY, failing which – regrettably – a DMCA notification shall be forwarded to you and legal action by our clients’ lawyers and the BPI / RIAA shall follow : naturally, however, we trust that such a course of action shall not prove to be necessary.

On behalf of the artist’s label, we do appreciate that you are a fan of / are promoting Dinosaur Jr but, by the same token, you must also appreciate that, by posting a pirate copy of the album pre-release (or linking to a pirate copy of the album), you are potentially causing considerable damage and we are sure that you would not want to be held to be personally liable for all of the lost sales that could ensue.

We shall look forward to hearing from you BY RETURN.

Thank you for respecting the artist’s creation and copyrights and, for your info, the label are making certain tracks from the forthcoming album available for free download from its own site.

As you will appreciate, this e-mail – containing, as it does, a position that is potentially prejudicial to our clients’ open / formal position – is written on a without prejudice basis and, as such, all of our clients’ accumulated, worldwide rights remain strictly reserved : please excuse this required formality.

With Thanks & Regards

WEB SHERIFF

It’s very polite and apologetic; you can almost imagine Dudley Moore stammering it out to you. Anyway, what we don’t know–and maybe some bloggers can fill us in–is whether the Sheriffs do this in lieu of emailing the site’s administrators, or do it only when a formal C&D letter isn’t acknowledged, or do it just because it’s sort of fun for them to call people out in public. No matter what, you can still hear the Dino songs on the Hype Machine’s pop-up player, so power to the people, etc.

Maybe Now It’s Dinosaur Sr. [Faronheit]