WTF?! Remember the early days of the internet, when many net denizens would download music from file-sharing platforms such as Napster and burn it onto CDs? Like Blockbuster, such things are seen as a relic of a bygone age, so it's surprising to learn that a UK man has just been handed a suspended jail sentence for unauthorized mixing and selling of music CDs.
Trading standards officers first began investigating 47-year-old Marc Kearns from Snaith in East Yorkshire in 2019. The BBC reports that the the British Phonographic Industry had become aware of his love of old-school CD music burning a year earlier. A warrant was finally executed in September 2022.
Yorkshire Council said Kearns created and distributed CDs containing unauthorized remixes of well-known tracks, using identifiable elements of original sound recordings without permission from the copyright owners.
Kearns pleaded guilty to several charges and was given a six-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work.
A council spokesperson said: "This activity enabled him to commercially exploit protected material, generating income at the expense of legitimate artists and businesses within the music industry."
That does seem like a surprisingly harsh sentence for what seems like a very archaic practice – most people don't even own CD players/optical drives anymore – but there are some things to remember.
Also read: The CD turns 43: The format that changed music forever
The involvement of trading standards suggests Kearns' business was more than just handing out a few pirated CDs to friends for a small sum.
Moreover, while CDs aren't dead – we're actually seeing a resurgence in physical media right now – they were more popular in the preceding decade. If trading standards only became aware of what Kearns was doing in 2018, he might have been selling the CDs for years before then. Even today, you'll often find vendors selling pirated CDs at flea markets in the UK and elsewhere.
Streaming may have replaced burned discs for most people, but selling remixes built from protected recordings can still be treated as commercial infringement. For local authorities, the sentence will likely be framed as a warning to others still operating in physical media's shadows.
Old-school crime: man gets suspended jail sentence for burning and selling pirated CDs
