NEW YORK CITY COPS

Making the streets of New York safe: swarms of police raid Kim's video in New York, arresting five staff and seizing as many as 500 copies of what's claimed to be pirated CDs:

"The New York City Police Department's steadfast commitment to the fight against piracy has stamped out yet another significant illegal operation," said Brad Buckles, executive vice president of anti-piracy for the RIAA. "With actions such as these, New York City law enforcement continues to send a strong message to music pirates that this behavior simply will not be tolerated. Retailers who are making money on the backs of musicians and record companies by selling pirated CDs should know that this is absolutely no way to conduct a business."

It's nice to know in a state that had nearly five murders for every 100,000 citizens in 2003 that the police are concentrating their resources on dodgy Jay-Z mixtapes.

Of course, the RIAA were involved (more and more they seem to see the cops as their own personal squad). This bit, from VH1's report, is interesting:

The raid is just the latest offensive in the RIAA's battle against the growing trend of pirated music sales through small, established businesses. While traditional physical goods or "commercial" piracy previously required large and expensive facilities to produce massive numbers of illegal tapes and CDs, some retailers now possess the potential to yield lucrative returns with only a minimal investment of space and capital, Buckles said.

But hang about... didn't the RIAA spend most of the last few years claiming that music piracy was part of organised crime, with links to money laundering, drugs, and so on? But now its a mom-and-pop operation, is it? That's quite confusing. But if it is indeed the case, then surely the idea of using a few CDs to keep something as valuable as an independent local shop going is one to be encouraged. Maybe some of those threatened Post Offices should think about buying a CD burner and an iTunes subscription...

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