You can trust the music industry

All those guys in the record labels - they're pretty straight kinda guys. You can trust them.

Up to a point. The Australian RIAA client has got an only-slightly-sinister-sounding Music Industry Piracy Investigations unit which has produced a video for kids to teach them about copying being bad. It turns out, though, that they got some musicians to take part by lying to them:

Frenzal Rhomb guitarist Lindsay McDougall, also a radio presenter at Triple J, told the Herald he was furious at being "lumped in with this witch hunt" and that he had been "completely taken out of context and defamed" by the Australian music industry, which funded the video.

He said he was told the 10-minute film, which is being distributed for free to all high schools in Australia, was about trying to survive as an Australian musician and no one mentioned the video would be used as part of an anti-piracy campaign.

The MIPI Unit denies that anyone was duped:

Sabiene Heindl, general manager of the music industry's anti-piracy arm, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), which partly coordinated the film and is pushing for it to be included in school units related to copyright and file sharing, said all of the feedback she had received so far from other artists and their managers had been positive.

She questioned whether McDougall had actually watched the film and said only 1-2 minutes of it discussed the issue of downloading and how it impacted musicians.

- although it seem strange that a Piracy unit would be making a film which wasn't actually about piracy, and push for it to appear in schools when teaching about copyright if it wasn't about copyright. We love the way they're saying "well, nobody else complained" as if that somehow disproves McDougall's complaint.trip