Posted by carsss1234567 on 02/25/06 21:37

> Soon we we'll be getting paid in Shekels...

Though no guns were brandished, the bust from a distance looked like
classic LAPD, DEA or FBI work, right down to the black "raid" vests the
unit members wore. The fact that their yellow stenciled lettering read
"RIAA" instead of something from an official law-enforcement agency was
lost on 55-year-old parking-lot attendant Ceasar Borrayo.

The Recording Industry Association of America is taking it to the
streets.

Even as it suffers setbacks in the courtroom, the RIAA has over the
last 18 months built up a national staff of ex-cops to crack down on
people making and selling illegal CDs in the hood.

The result has been a growing number of scenes like the one played out
in Silver Lake just before Christmas, during an industry blitz to
combat music piracy.

Borrayo attends to a parking lot next to the landmark El 7 Mares
fish-taco stand on Sunset Boulevard. To supplement his buck-a-car
income, he began, in 2003, selling records and videos from a makeshift
stand in front of the lot.

In a good week, Borrayo said, he might unload five or 10 albums and a
couple DVDs at $5 apiece. Paying a distributor about half that
up-front, he thought hed lucked into a nice side business.

The RIAA saw it differently. Figuring the discs were bootlegs, a
four-man RIAA squad descended on his stand a few days before Christmas
and persuaded the 4-foot-11 Borrayo to hand over voluntarily a total of
78 discs. It wasnt a tough sell.

"They said they were police from the recording industry or something,
and next time theyd take me away in handcuffs," he said through an
interpreter. Borrayo says he has no way of knowing if the records, with
titles like Como Te Extra)B¤o Vol. IV Musica de los 70s y 80s, are
illegal, but he thought better of arguing the point.

The RIAA acknowledges it all except the notion that its staff presents
itself as police. Yes, they may all be ex-P.D. Yes, they wear cop-style
clothes and carry official-looking IDs. But if they leave people like
Borrayo with the impression that theyre actual law
enforcement, thats a mistake.

"We want to be very clear who we are and what were doing," says John
Langley, Western regional coordinator for the RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit.
"First and foremost, were professionals."
Langley, based in Los Alamitos, California, oversees five staff
investigators and around 20 contractors who sniff out bootleg discs
west of the Rockies. The former Royal Canadian Mountie said his units
on-the-streets approach has been a big success, netting more than
100,000 pieces of unauthorized merchandise during the recent Christmas
retail blitz.

With all the trappings of a police team, including pink incident
reports that, among other things, record a vendors height, weight, hair
and eye color, the RIAA squad can give those busted the distinct
impression theyre tangling with minions of Johnny Law instead of David
Geffen. And that raises some potential legal questions.

Contacted for this article, the Southern California branch of the
American Civil Liberties Union said it needed more information on the
practices to know if specific civil liberties were at risk.

But if an anti-piracy team crossed the line between looking like cops
and implying or telling vendors that they are cops, the Los Angeles
Police Department would take a pretty dim view, said LAPD spokesman
Jason Lee.

"I will not say its okay to be [selling] illegal stuff," Lee said.
"Thats a violation of penal codes.

"But it doesnt really matter what your status is. If that person feels
he was wrongly interrogated or under the false pretense that these
people were cops, they should contact their local police station as a
victim. Well sort it all out."

For its part, the RIAA maintains that the up-close-and-personal
techniques are nothing new. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy says its
investigators do not represent themselves as police, and that the
incident reports vendors are asked to sign, in which they agree to
hand over their discs, explicitly state that the forfeiture is
voluntary.

Lamy and the RIAA are unapologetic about taking the fight against music
piracy to the streets. Though the association has suffered a few
high-profile legal setbacks in recent months most notably when a
three-judge panel ruled that Internet service providers do not have to
squeal on their file-swapping customers community action is extremely
effective.

Langley says the anti-piracy teams have about an 80 percent success
rate in persuading vendors to hand over their merchandise voluntarily
for destruction.

"We notify them that continued sale would be a violation of civil and
criminal codes. If theyd like to voluntarily turn the product over to
us, well destroy it, and we agree we wont sue," he explained.

The pink incident sheets and photos that Langleys teams take of vendors
are meant to establish a paper trail, particularly for repeat
offenders.

"A large percentage [of the vendors] are of a Hispanic nature," Langley
said. "Today hes Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow hes Raul something or other,
and tomorrow after that hes something else. These people change their
identity all the time. A pictures worth a thousand words."

Though Langley says he doesnt know what tack his new boss will take,
the recent hiring of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF) Director Bradley Buckles to head the anti-piracy unit
has some RIAA watchers holding their breath.

On its face, the move looks like a shift toward even more in-your-face
enforcement. But dont expect all RIAA critics to rally to the side of
Borrayo and other sellers.

"The process of confiscating bootleg CDs from street vendors is exactly
what the RIAA should be doing," said Jason Schultz, a staff attorney
for the San Franciscobased Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The EFF has frequently crossed swords with the record industry over its
strategy of suing ISPs and individual listeners accused of downloading
tunes from the Internet. A champion of copyright "fair use," the EFF
says Buckles could bring a more balanced approach to the
RIAAs anti-piracy efforts. The more time the association spends
rousting vendors, the thinking goes, the less it will spend subpoenaing
KaZaa and BearShare aficionados.

Meanwhile, Borrayo will have to keep his eyes open for another source
of income. Though he says he still sees nothing wrong with what he did,
the guy who once supplied him records hasnt been around in a couple
months.

"They tried to scare me," Borrayo said. "They told me, Youre a pirate!
I said, Cmon, guys, pirates are all at sea. I just work in a parking
lot. "

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