Record Label Takes on the RIAA

TORONTO (CP) - A prominent Canadian record executive who has taken the unusual step of helping a Texas family fight a downloading lawsuit says he has the support of all the artists he manages, including Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan and the Barenaked Ladies.

Terry McBride, who heads Nettwerk Music Group, a label and management company, is backing efforts by David Greubel of Arlington, Texas, to fight a lawsuit filed last August by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Nettwerk will cover all of Greubel's legal costs, as well as any fines should the family lose the case, McBride says.

The lawsuit accuses Greubel of having 600 illegally downloaded music files on the family computer, including Lavigne's Sk8er Boi.

The association has offered to settle the suit if Greubel pays $9,000 US.

"It's time to step up and say 'This is crazy,' " McBride said Monday from his Vancouver office.

"My hope is that this (Nettwerk's support) will create a positive concrete conversation between the artists, their managers and the record labels as to what the future is . . . The fan is the future. Suing the fan is like shooting yourself in the foot."

The case came to McBride's attention after Greubel's 15-year-old daughter wrote an e-mail to MC Lars, a punk-rap performer managed by Nettwerk. Elisa Greubel wrote that she identified with MC Lars's track Download This Song.

"My family is one of many seemingly randomly chosen families to be sued by the RIAA. No fun. You can't fight them, trying could possibly cost us millions," she wrote.

"I'm not saying it is right to download but the whole lawsuit business is a tad bit outrageous."

Calling the letter the "tipping point," McBride said he wanted to take the fear of fighting a suit launched by a big association out of the equation for ordinary people.

"We have to stop this," said McBride, adding that he's received e-mails of support from several U.S. congressmen, a U.S. senator and some record label presidents whose names he wouldn't reveal.

He doesn't think suing is a solution because "people have been sharing music for decades."

"We can sue into the ground, this behaviour is not going to change."

McBride's solution includes a system where Internet, mobile and digital service providers collect fees on behalf of the industry.

Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page agrees suing fans is not the answer, although he doesn't want people to steal his music.

"You can't say 'See you in court and then we'll see you at Massey Hall next year.' It's one or the other," he said when reached at a recording studio Monday.

"Labels have created complacency. They've made everybody feel like music is a product . . . Music isn't pants. It's something people respond to emotionally.

"These people who download music, trade music and share it, are people who love music. I think the labels have forgotten that. They keep pushing people away."

Some have hailed McBride as a hero for his support for the Greubel family.

"What he's doing is really terrific," says Jon Newton, a Vancouver Island resident who runs p2pnet.net, a digital media news website.

"This is how things should be - producers and performers working with, and for, the people who keep them alive. And it's brilliant to see a Canadian company leading the way."

Newton's p2pnet website has been raising money to help with the legal fees of another RIAA defendant, New York resident Patti Santangelo.

To date, the site has raised over $7,000 for her defence fund.

The RIAA has launched copyright infringement lawsuits against some 16,000 people since 2003. About 4,000 of those suits have been settled.

Efforts to take similar legal action in Canada have been unsuccessful. A federal court judge ruled in a 2004 case that downloading a song or making files available in shared directories, like those on Kazaa, does not constitute copyright infringement under current Canadian law.

The Canadian Recording Industry Association has been lobbying Ottawa to change the law. Association president Graham Henderson was unavailable Monday for comment.

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