ALL SHALL PERISH ARE NOT SUING THEIR FANS
I wasn’t even gonna write about this, but we’ve gotten so many e-mails about it that I now feel obligated to do so with the hopes of ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s really going on here. And so…
On Friday, the Miami New Times ran a story that “World Digital, a Panamanian company that licenses” All Shall Perish’s songs, had filed a federal lawsuit against a eighty to a hundred fans who illegally downloaded ASP’s most recent release, last year’s This is Where it Ends. The suit was said to be seeking $150,000 in damages, as well as court costs, from each fan (totaling somewhere in the ballpark of fifteen million dollars). And the story struck me as being a little bit odd from the moment I read it, ’cause a) surely by now bands have learned from the whole Metallica/Napster fiasco, and b) while All Shall Perish are a successful band, let’s be real — no one is getting rich from This is Where it Ends. I’m not saying that makes it okay to illegally download the album — I’m just saying that for All Shall Perish, of all bands, to pursue such a course of action seemed a little, well, odd.
And, hey, the story turned out to be bullshit — sort of.
Within hours of its being published, All Shall Perish’s manager, Ryan Downey from Artery Foundation, had forwarded MetalSucks an e-mail he sent the Miami New Times, in which he said that “ALL SHALL PERISH HAS NOT FILED SUIT AGAINST ANYONE” (emphasis his), and that “I have no idea who Omar [Ortega, World Digital’s alleged attorney] is, or World Digital, nor does anyone in the band, or their attorney.” Downey has since gone on to tell Metal Insider “When I called our US label manager on Friday, he was with the label president and they were both surprised and had no idea about this company.”
What’s scary here is that the lawsuit is apparently real — even if it’s news to the band and, it would seem, their label. How did this happen? I don’t know enough about ASP’s deal with Nuclear Blast to know for sure. Is it possible NB has the ability to license All Shall Perish’s music without the group’s knowledge or permission and that’s what’s happened here? It seems unlikely that some crazy Panamanian company would file such a suit despite having no legal right to do so, doesn’t it? They couldn’t possibly think it would have gone unnoticed.
But while we wait for the answer to this mystery, I do wanna emphasize one thing — and again, this is why I’m even writing about this in the first place: any kind of backlash or protest against All Shall Perish would be, simply put, misplaced rage. Because, again, they had no idea about this lawsuit, they have nothing to do with this lawsuit, and they don’t support this lawsuit. It’s okay to be pissed about the lawsuit — just make sure you’re pissed at the right people.
More details as they become available.
-AR
