Rock & Rap reports: “In the western U.S. , ex-Canadian Mountie John Langley leads the RIAA Anti-Piracy Unit (APU). Just before Christmas, reported Ben Sullivan in an excellent L.A. Weekly story, Langley ’s squads moved in to terrorize Latino street corner vendors. The APU wore black raid vests, claimed they were cops, and made guys like parking lot attendant Cesar Borrayo ‘voluntarily’ give up their small quantities of Mexican oldies compilations. The music police also photograph their victims because, Langley claims, ‘Today he’s Jose Rodriguez, tomorrow he’s Raul something or other, and tomorrow after that he’s something else. These people change their identity all the time.’ Besides racism, what’s going on here?”
No doubt Langley ’s comments drip of racism, but that’s not the entire story. While some (not RRC) might argue that the APU does a public service by removing bootleg or pirated recordings from the market place, even those who wish to see them confiscated would have to question Langley’s methods.
What it all boils down to is that a fascist has no regard for the rights of his victims_sometimes viewing his targets along racial lines, but not always. John Langley is a fascist, but his targets go beyond Latinos. In October of 1997 I had my own run-in with John Langley. During that period he was an APU agent stationed in the Midwest . I was publishing a magazine at the time called Live Music Review that was often extremely critical of RIAA actions on everything from price-fixing scams to their lobbying efforts to their ludicrous interpretation of copyright law. Live Music Review frequently ran editorials exposing why pirated discs exist (among other things the RIAA’s attempts to keep CD prices falsely inflated through price-fixing, therefore beyond the economic reach of poor people – a conclusion also reached in the RRC article).
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