by: Robert Pasbani and Darren Delgado
Victory Records hired Gilbert Gottfried of all people to star in an anti-piracy PSA, which you can see above. I think Gilbert Gottfried is hilarious, and he did make me chuckle a bit in this video. The problem that I have with this video is that old Gilby's argument is that you shouldn't steal because you are taking money from the artists.
Yet the company backing this video is a record label who is notorious for withholding money from artists. The label has been sued multiple times by different artists who used to be on the roster who claim they were never paid by the label. Their former vice president once wrote a really long scathing open letter about the label, it's owner, Tony Brummel and the shady practices that went down there. I tried to Google the letter and nearly all versions of it were removed by the Victory legal team; all but one link on some girl's LiveJournal page (Update: even longer version here). Finally! Livejournal is good for something. If you are interested in a solid read about how corrupt labels can be, I recommend checking out that writeup.
And back to the issue of anti-piracy, yes, you're right, it's kind of like a lemonade stand. It's like a lemonade stand where someone spends all day working their ass off making lemonade. Then a lemonade distribution company comes by, and buys all your lemonade for 3 cents for the whole pitcher. Then they go on the street and sell it for $25.99 a glass, and wonder why no one is buying it, and yell at the people who aren't paying into their Ponzi scheme and make videos calling them unemployed idiots and to go fuck themselves.
The money Victory spent on hiring Gottfried to do that spot could've just been split amongst all the struggling bands on the Victory roster who skip out on meals they can't afford while on the road promoting records that your label puts out.
