The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) isn’t letting HitPiece off the hook just because it shut down its website after multiple artists complained about their work being utilized without their consent. The group has filed a letter to HitPiece’s attorney requesting that the website and its creators stop infringing on music IPs, provide a comprehensive log of site operations, and account for any NFTs that have been auctioned off. It also wants to know how much money was made on the website. Rory Felton, the founder of HitPiece, previously stated that artists will be compensated for selling digital goods related to them, but the musicians that spoke up are suspicious.
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The gang repeatedly referred to HitPiece as a con to take advantage of supporters in the letter. Ken Doroshow, the RIAA’s Chief Legal Officer, said the organization utilized “buzzwords and jargon” to mask the fact that it didn’t get the rights it needed and to fool people into thinking they were buying a genuine artist-related item. “While the operators appear to have taken the main HitPiece site offline, for the time being, this move was necessary to ensure a fair accounting for the harm HitPiece and its operators have already caused, and to ensure that this site or copycats do not simply resume their scams under a different name,” Doroshow added.
Despite the fact that HitPiece advertised itself as a platform for music NFTs, the company’s founders maintained that it did not sell any sound files. The RIAA, on the other hand, claims that it continued to use the artists’ names, photographs, and copyrighted album art. Furthermore, the RIAA claims that if it didn’t sell any sound files, it “likely amounts to yet another type of fraud.”
