The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) calls for an end to “bogus” NFT site HitPiece‘s infringement of artists’ rights. The cease and desist was forwarded to the attorneys of HitPiece on February 4th, 2022.
The RIAA insists HitPiece stop infringing on the intellectual rights of the musicians for selling NFTs of their music without the consent of the original artists. This is nothing new, HitPiece has been criticized in the past by both artists and fans for the same reason. After an apology from the company on February 2nd, this wasn’t enough.
The line was crossed and the FIAA decided to step in to take legal action and show that there is no playing around in this industry.
“HitPiece appears to be little more than a scam operation designed to trade on fans’ love of music and desire to connect more closely with artists, using buzzwords and jargon to gloss over their complete failure to obtain necessary rights. Fans were led to believe they were purchasing an NFT genuinely associated with an artist and their work when that was not at all the case. While the operators appear to have taken the main HitPiece site offline for now, this move was necessary to ensure a fair accounting for the harm HitPiece and its operators have already done and to ensure that this site or copycats don’t simply resume their scams under another name.”
Ken Doroshow, RIAA Chief Legal Officer