Quote Unquote Records accused of running afoul copyright law

Quote Unquote Records has had its website shut down by its hosting provider. The label, which has released music from Bomb the Music Industry!, Arrogant Sons of Bitches and The Riot Before is known through the punk community for giving its music away and asking people who download it to donate if they feel so compelled.
The label explains in a blog entry that it was accused by its host of providing copyright material for download. Of course, this is true, but the label points out that they actually own the copyright material in question.

my site was down, due to having copyrighted files on my site, a violation of the terms of service. The only way I could get my site back up and running would be to mail my registered copyright forms to them. I called the company to explain that a lot of this material was NOT in fact registered with the US copyright office, instead we did the ol' poor man's copyright. The music that was copyrighted was done so under a Creative Commons License, which is a digital copyright that cannot be viewed if the website where the files are posted is down.

You can click Read More for the rest of the blog entry.

Hey, so some of you might have noticed that none of the links to download songs work anymore, and the sites for bomb the music industry, media frenzy design, quote unquote records and the arrogant sons of bitches are completely down. This sadly isn't the standard "oh, I forgot to pay my bills." This is a greater and much dumber problem.

A little over a week ago, I was notified by my web hosting company that I had some files of copyrighted music on my website. The files were songs by ASOB that had been up there for about five years which I had forgotten about. These were songs that I had written. I spoke to a person on the phone who said "well, OK, if those are your songs then never mind." Seeing where this was going, I removed the little bit of copyrighted music I was storing - four 311 albums.

Three days later my site was down, due to having copyrighted files on my site, a violation of the terms of service. The only way I could get my site back up and running would be to mail my registered copyright forms to them. I called the company to explain that a lot of this material was NOT in fact registered with the US copyright office, instead we did the ol' poor man's copyright. The music that was copyrighted was done so under a Creative Commons License, which is a digital copyright that cannot be viewed if the website where the files are posted is down.

It's been a week since my website is down and I keep getting the same answer from these doofuses. I guess the scary thing for me is that it seems that my hosting server (and others who i have spoken to about this incident while looking to move locations) employs a guilty before proven innocent policy, which is terrifying for anyone who does not physically mail forms for every small idea they've ever had in their bedroom to the US copyright office. What a great new digital age, stuck in the trappings of wasteful forms and red tape.

All bitching aside, the biggest trouble here is that I don't have any of the content that was on Quote Unquote Records anymore. As is the routine at this point in my life, my hard drive crashed erasing everything I've worked on this year right before starting work of Scrambles (the same thing happened during Goodbye Cool World, Get Warmer and Pegasuses-XL's The Antiphon). So, long story short, I'm looking for any artwork or mp3s that were put on Quote Unquote Records.

It sadly looks like I'm going to have to do a complete overhaul within the next few weeks, rewrite everything that was up there, and so on and so forth. It might be a minute before the site is back up, so in the meantime I encourage that you check out my friend Dave's website, If You Make It. He's doing something similar to what we do at Quote Unquote and has a bunch of friends bands from Brooklyn and beyond. Bands like the Brass, Get Bent and Halo Fauna have albums, demos, EPs, etc. available for download free there so check it out in the mean time. Plus tonsovideos.

Quote Unquote will be back and better than ever (or maybe the same as ever which is still pretty okay) soon. Potentially sooner we will be releasing Laura Stevenson's awesome new record, which you can hear some demos from at http://www.myspace.com/laurastevenson.

Thanks for stickin' this out with us… please get in touch in the comments section of this blog if you have quote unquote stuff that you wouldn't mind sending my way. Thanks.