STOP CHIPTUNE THEFT!

I am a huge fan of music sharing and the creative commons culture that is seemingly beginning to dominate the music industry. With fashionable hipsters like Radiohead and Nine Inch Niles all but giving their music away for free on the internet as a way to expand their fanbase and then make money from live shows. This is seeming more and more the way the music industry will overcome many of the problems of piracy. However, a very strange and completely unseen consequence is occurring from this, particularly in regard to the creative consumer. Most media-savvy people are now not content with just consuming music and art but wanting to participate and create themselves hence the rise of the creative consumers who share and participate in culture through the internet, where it seems now everybody has their own attempted individuality on display. The consequence of this is some people for whatever reason have begun uploading other peoples music and claiming they created it.

Some of the more extreme examples of this are Laromlab and Fitts for Fights. These artists built their entire reputations and musical career from performing and releasing other peoples materials as their own. What makes these examples extreme is the popularity these artists reached off the backs of other artists hard work before being found out. Fitts for Fights are now releasing actual original material and Laromlabs musical future is still unknown. The theft often doesn't progress to these extremes but on a smaller scale seems to be very widespread. The following is a roll call of the lesser known theivery that has taken place:

• DJ Chiento - Uploaded Bitshifter's tracks on Youtube as his own
• LFNT - Uploaded Covox's tracks to 8bit Collective as his own
• Vespertine (Brian Green) - stole Sabrepulses and Unicorn Kids music and created more drama on 8bc than an episode of Home and Away
• Eltronovox - uploaded 2 tracks from Grand Theft Andrew's kittenrock released EP to his own myspace
• Callum!Ate-bit - A bunch of stolen tracks apparently uploaded by his friend jack
• Ricky Romance - stole zepsi's track and possibly others
• Chav Murder Fetish (Ben Sullivan) - stole a track by ElectronicMess and ironically a remix by Fuckcopyright
• Franklin and Gorgo - Released only variations of covox's tunes (ie sped up reversed etc) one track released on a squish squash squad compilation

And I am sure there is and has been alot more what is important is all of these listed were found out and shut down before they actually built a sizable reputation or fanbase. So it seems that a combination of the sharing nature of Chiptunes being generally released for free mixed with lots of idiots without talent trying to become famous on myspace has led to a whole host of intellectual property thieves. The best thing that we can do as Chiptune enthusiasts is listen to lots of Chiptunes from reputable netlabels and when "generic 8bit artist" adds you on myspace just have a little listen to their tracks and make sure that you don't recognize it as belonging to someone else.

Alex
Chiptune Fraud Officer