Syndicate: Partners in subversion

[rtmark <rtmark@paranoia.com>]

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 6, 1998

Contacts: RTMARK (rtmark@paranoia.com) 
          Illegal Art (illegalart@detritus.net)
          Negativland (mark@negativland.com)
  
                  RTMARK ANNOUNCES NEW PARTNERSHIP
              Series with Illegal Art and Negativland 
    builds on earlier successes, encouraged by Geffen's tolerance

Three big players in the field of corporate subversion are joining forces.

Negativland has agreed to help Illegal Art and RTMARK with their new
"Deconstructing" series, which builds on the unexpectedly large success of
Deconstructing Beck, a compilation of illegally sampled Beck released by
Illegal Art and sponsored by RTMARK. The new series, for which RTMARK has
gathered $5,500 in "seed" funds, will sample well-known copyrighted
material for artistic purposes; Negativland will help distribute some of
the releases.

First in the series is Deconstructing Beck itself, already re-released on
Negativland's label, Seeland. The next release, slated for August, will
"deconstruct" Hollywood film music. New releases are planned every six
months thereafter, with RTMARK providing more funding as needed.

The music industry's relative calm in the face of Deconstructing
Beck--which has been featured on radio stations worldwide and has made it
onto many of their "top 10" charts--has encouraged Illegal Art and RTMARK
to establish the series. Beck's label, Geffen, reacted aggressively at
first to the CD, but has since then been silent. In a recent e-mail to
RTMARK, Geffen's Jim Griffin wrote: "Frankly, everyone seems to have
forgotten about it and I suspect that at most our attorneys felt obligated
to write you some kind of note. But no one here so much as busted a sweat
when they heard about it.... They probably felt the need to raise some
amount of token objection so it didn't set a precedent."

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Geffen, Beck's publisher (BMG) is still trying
to force Illegal Art to cease distribution, but so far can't find a
physical address to which to deliver a threatening letter, the necessary
prelude to any legal action. (See
http://www.paranoia.com/~rtmark/lawletters.html for some of the
correspondence, including a response by Negativland to Geffen's lawyers.
Also see http://www.paranoia.com/~rtmark/faq.html for articles about
Deconstructing Beck.)

Geffen's passivity may reflect emerging industry standards, according to
RTMARK spokesperson Ray Thomas. A few years ago, U2's lawyers pursued
Negativland for an album which sampled U2's music extensively. When U2
itself found out, they called off the lawyers, but it turned out that U2's
reputation had already been tarnished by the episode. When Negativland
later did a similar thing with Pepsi jingles, Pepsi, perhaps wisely, chose
not to react. Something similar may be happening with Geffen, according to
Thomas, and "BMG is just being thick."

Negativland spokesperson Mark H. likewise believes that Geffen has learned
its lesson. "Geffen knows this sort of thing is no threat to the sampled
artist. For their lawyers to really pursue this would only make Beck look
mean-spirited, and they know it."

There is another possible explanation as well. Beck, who was sent a copy
of Deconstructing Beck shortly after its initial release in February, is
rumored to like the CD.



RTMARK was established in 1991 to further intelligent subversion, in some
cases by channelling funds from donors to workers for sabotage of
corporate products. Recent and upcoming acts of RTMARK-aided subversion
are documented on RTMARK's web site, http://www.paranoia.com/~rtmark. 

                       # 30 #

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