Q. What do you call 20 record company executives at the bottom of the ocean?
A. A good start.

Can there be any doubt that the music industry is one of the slimiest rackets on Earth eclipsed only by the boxing game, Vegas casinos and legalized prostitution? If you’re suffering under any delusions to the contrary this story may start to clear that up.

The website Funkprobosci tells the story of how George Clinton was robbed of the rights to his most iconic music and his fight to regain control. And how, in the meantime, his name was dragged through the mud as the robber used his pilfered product to suck the life out of Hip Hop, suing artists over samples he had no rights to.

From the website:

Who is the most hated person in the music business? One strong contender is Armen Boladian, the world’s most litigious sampling opponent. His lawyers have persuaded courts to suggest that samples, no matter how short or altered, can never be a fair use of copyright, thereby clouding the future of one of hip hop’s foundations. Boladian’s publishing company Bridgeport Music claimed control of thousands of songs, including everything George Clinton and P-Funk created between 1976 and 1983 (such as “Flash Light,” “Atomic Dog,” and “One Nation Under A Groove”), just as those songs became some of hip hop’s most prized source materials. Clinton, who went into bankruptcy while fighting Bridgeport, says Boladian owns none of it and simply forged his name on key documents. That hasn’t stopped him: in 2001 Boladian sued 800 different defendants in one fell swoop, virtually everyone who had sampled Clinton by that point.

Welcome to the world of the copyright troll — non-creators who use copyrights (no matter how dubiously claimed) to wring exorbitant settlements or judgments against downstream users. Copyright, the creator’s greatest economic asset, has gotten a bad reputation from such over-enforcement.

Dan Booth
Experience Music Project Pop Conference 2011

Not only is this maggot (and I don’t mean that in a good way) ripping off George Clinton, but he’s putting the kibosh on Hip Hop, Rap and sampling itself. It seems these users will never tire of exploiting African American culture. A pox on the lot of them.

Read more at Funkprobosci