The Recording Industry Association of America is threatening legal action against the new NFT platform, HitPiece, which initiated a beta this week. The company allegedly listed thousands of NFTs of single and album artwork for sale after allegedly taking information from Spotify’s API without responses from artists.
RIAA is alleging the company’s infringement of their intellectual property rights. In a letter to Hitpiece’s attorney, RIAA senior vice president of litigation Jared Freeman, stated, “As you are no doubt aware, your clients, through the HitPiece website, have been engaged in the systematic and flagrant infringement of the intellectual property rights of the Record Companies and their recording artists on a massive scale,”
While the site was removed, RIAA is still accusing HitPiece of being “liable to the record companies and their artists for damages” for its time spent live.
RIAA’s Chief Legal Officer, Ken Doroshow, spoke of the company’s alleged business model:
“HitPiece appears to be little more than a scam operation designed to trade on fans’ love of music and desire to connect more closely with artists, using buzzwords and jargon to gloss over their complete failure to obtain necessary rights,” he said. “Fans were led to believe they were purchasing an NFT genuinely associated with an artist and their work when that was not at all the case. While the operators appear to have taken the main HitPiece site offline for now, this move was necessary to ensure a fair accounting for the harm HitPiece and its operators have already done and to ensure that this site or copycats don’t simply resume their scams under another name.”
RIAA CEO Mitch Glazier also spoke of the company’s alleged use of NFTs:
“As music lovers and artists embrace new technologies like NFTs, there’s always someone looking to exploit their excitement and energy,” says RIAA Chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier. “Given how fans were misled and defrauded by these unauthorized NFTs and the massive risk to both fans and artists posed by HitPiece and potential copycats, it was clear we had to move immediately and urgently to stand up for fairness and honesty in the market.”
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