Bradley Buckles, the new head of anti-piracy for the Recording Industry Association of America, hasn’t been to a concert since attending a Who show more than twenty years ago. The former director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a lifetime law-enforcement officer with a reputation for steely toughness. But despite his “just the facts” demeanor, Buckles may not be the enforcer that music fans have feared.
He had nothing to do with the lawsuits filed March 23rd against 532 file-sharers, according to a spokeswoman for the RIAA, the major labels’ lobbying group. And in an hour-long interview with Rolling Stone in his Washington, D.C., office, Buckles stressed that his background and what he has discovered on the job have led him more in the direction of offline illegal activity. File-sharing remains part of the equation, but illegal CD copying and sales “is the number-one priority,” he says. “We’re focusing our efforts as high on the chain of production as we can go.”
Buckles, 54, repeatedly returns to the point that large-scale illegal CD pressing is on the rise. Improved technology has made it easier to copy music illegally, and some retailers have started to stock counterfeits, even without their knowledge. In February, Buckles’ office sent letters to nearly thirty businesses that were selling illegal CDs and music DVDs, offering them a choice of settling claims or facing legal action. (He refuses to divulge the retailers’ names.) On March 26th, Buckles teamed with the New York Police Department to bust one of the largest counterfeit-CD rings in the Northeast, seizing 100 high-speed burners and 15,000 illegally copied CDs.
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