When Music Industry Blackmail Backfires

from the lets-try-that-again dept

It seems that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which appears to be their equivalent of the RIAA, made a strategic mistake. We had mentioned last month their ridiculous attempts to extort money from EasyEverything, saying that the company owned them £1m because they had CD-burners in their internet cafes. It was never clear how they came up with that number, but they kept backing down to a lower number each time EasyEverything refused to pay. Part of the extortion plan, it seems, was to "threaten" EasyEverything that they would "go public" with the info. What exactly would they go public with? The fact that EasyEverything had CD-burners in their internet cafes? I don't quite see how that would be very scary to EasyEverything. In fact, it wasn't. In response, EasyEverything went public with the whole case themselves, and now BPI is going to court to get a gag order to force them to shut up already. Sounds like things over in the UK with BPI might be even more screwed up than the RIAA here in the US.

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