Aberrant RPG - Nova Celebs Clamp Down On Copyright Theft

[Matt]

<font size="4">Nova Celebs Clamp Down On Copyright Theft</font>

by Robert Blackwood

N! Prime Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY -- While Novox singer Alejandra launches her third studio album with a punishing four-month North American tour schedule, her record label and attorneys are launching an onslaught of another kind: clamping down on OpNet piracy.

Fourteen OpNet users and site creators and node managers were served with cease and desist orders Thursday, demanding that all copies of copyrighted materials, such as songs and unreleased photos of the Nova singing star, be removed from all servers, computers and storage media.

"Alejandra may be a public figure -- perhaps the most public figure in history -- but that doesn't make her image, or her work, public domain. She has a right to control her own identity, just as the rest of us do," said New River Records chief counsel Tai Beebe. "The Zurich Accord says that Novas have the same protection under copyright law as any baseline performer."

Alejandra, born Alejandra Maria Magdalena Carranza, was preparing for her performance in New York and unavailable for comment Wednesday.

All those served with the papers who N! Prime was able to contact Wednesday said that they intended to comply with the orders, and expected to have the images and sound files removed within the 72-hour time period proscribed by the order.

"They're already gone off my site," Mick Underhill, 22, manager of the OpNet site Unofficial Alejandra Worship Page , said of the images and sound files named in the court order.

"I don't know why they're doing it, though. It's not like they were losing any sales from my site. I didn't have entire albums. People who downloaded the songs off my site would later go on and buy the albums and concert tickets. I even get a cut if they buy them from the links on my site. I want her to sell more albums." New River officials say they intend to "aggressively pursue" others engaged in posting bootleg sound files and images to the OpNet, as soon as they can be located.

Other Novox artists, stung by the recent proliferation of the MP5 sound file format, are said to be watching the effectiveness of New River's maneuvers and considering similar legal actions of their own.

MP5 is a compression format for digitized sound files that compresses them to less than five percent their original size, with no loss of sound quality. Over a typical OpNet connection, an entire 70-minute album in MP5 format can be downloaded almost instantly.

Not all Novox artists restrict their recourse to legal action, though. MoniQ, a New York-based techno-rap artist and vocal Teragen supporter, is suspected of using her cyberkinetic abilities in May to destroy six servers belonging to NowVoice, a popular bootleg MP5 trading site.