(Reuters) (12/23/03)

By Paul Bond

Edited By Michael Bennett

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA - One more shopping day left before Christmas.

Whatever you do, don't buy your son or daughter a CD.

It makes a lousy gift, according to a web site that draws about 30,000 visitors a day.

The not-so-subtle message at http://www.WhatACrappyPresent.com is that kids are far better off downloading music for free off of the Internet than having their parents spend cash on prerecorded CDs.

Parents who don't heed the site's warning should prepare themselves for some rather harsh reactions from children who have just unwrapped a music CD, like: "The company that makes this sued my friend" or "I got that on the computer like two months ago."

The force behind this anti-Big Music site is familiar, or should be, to executives at the major labels and their lobbyists at The Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA).

It's Nicholas Reville and Holmes Wilson, whose home base effort to tweak the industry is at http://www.DownhillBattle.org.

They're also the duo behind http://www.StopRIAALawsuits.com, which aggregates about 190 different anti-RIAA Web sites.

At Web sites Reville and Wilson run and along with a partner site called http://www.RIAAradar.com, 4,000 people have obtained stickers reading, for example, "Warning! This record label pays radio stations to keep independent music off the air."

Consumers are encouraged to sneak the stickers onto certain CDs on sale at music stores nationwide.

Their web sites also allow for the downloading of fliers that better detail their gripes about the established music industry.

Basically, they maintain that the major labels work to ensure that struggling artists remain struggling.

Also they stifle musical diversity and delight in suing consumers who haven't the means to fight back.

"There's finally a crack in their armor," Reville says.

"We can get rid of this system that has an iron grip on radio and independent musicians."

Needless to say, the RIAA doubts the effectiveness of the group's rather unorthodox grass-roots campaign.

"It's an uphill battle for these folks to offer anything worthwhile," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy says.

"CD sales over the Christmas season are booming. Enough said."

Except one more thing ought to be said, and that is that WhatACrappyPresent.com is one of the most contagious sites on the Internet, according to http://www.Blogdex.com, a site run by MIT's Media Laboratory that keeps track of such things.

What that means is that other Web sites have been linking to CrappyPresent at a very quick pace.

It's a little viral anti-marketing, if you will.

While partner Holmes has a day job, Reville, a paid political activist who promotes left-wing causes, is unemployed.

His work on their anti-Big Music Web sites, therefore, is "the primary thing I'm doing."

And he adds (probably to the chagrin of some), "We're looking for some grant funding."

Copyright 2003-2008 Reuters/Internet Music Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

---

[Top]