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Universal Bans Fans From Cool Things

By Rema Rahman for Blend Music on November 20, 2007

Sigh, oh the current state of the recording industry. Copyright infringements, illegal downloading and overpricing have all contributed to artists rebelling against traditional music industry standards, which seems especially heightened this year.

Trent Reznor barely hit the “publish” button on his website when he was slapped with a major roadblock when putting up fan site remix.nin.com in support of Year Zero mix CD, Y34RZ3R0R3MIX3D. Apparently, however, Universal Music Group – the company that owns all of those Nine Inch Nails’ master files – have stalled the site aimed at giving fans a chance at remixing NIN songs by using those master files.

Hypocrisy is the name of this game – apparently Universal doesn’t want to host the site for fear it could back copyright infringement from fans using work not released under Universal while remixing. The company doesn’t want to come off as hypocrits because they are in the middle of lawsuits against sites like YouTube and MySpace for doing pretty much the same thing to them -- hosting files without the companies' permission.

The disc came out today (November 20) – in digital, CD and vinyl formats – and the site now only shows a picture of a man with two bills held up behind his glasses. Way to stick it to the man.

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