Fair Game: El Queso Allstars. Indielaunch unbans me and my response, 18 Oct 2002

El Queso <the_cheese_23@yahoo.com>
Indielaunch unbans me and my response.
18 Oct 2002

Dear sirs,

Thank you for applying your judgement to the situation, as opposed to simply banishing me when things got odd for you.

---"IndieLaunch.com Artist Services"
<artistservices@indielaunch.com> wrote:
> We have reactivated your IndieLaunch page however we
> have removed your
> song image files and deleted a few songs which we
> felt are defamming
> towards certain people.

Please tell me which songs and your reasons if it is possible.

> If you feel that these changes are not
> acceptable to you, we will be happy to close your
> account.

I have said that changes were acceptable - there is no need to be like this.

> You have to understand this...We are here to help
> Indie Artists. We are not here to host derogatory
> music aimed towards others.

I call it parody. It has a long musical history. It is good that record companies didn't feel this way about punk, rap, and people like Frank Zappa.

> We could care less about the Church of Scientology
> whatever their mission maybe. We did not create
> our site for people to voice their opinions in such
> a manner as you have done to groups of people.

I am merely making funny songs. If people seek them out, only to be offended - why should this bother anyone? They should just not listen, right?

> I am sorry but that is not our definition of music.
> Take it how you want to take it.

I make music that contains lyrics, harmonies, and rhythm - that is music. You have "songs" on your site that are just teens shouting into a mic without music or any kind of production.

> Also, I will state again. We have not been
> contacted by the Church of Scientology yet.

Of course nobody has said they were in Scn, but who else would care? Why else would anyone care enough to report some little band on a little site?

> However, unless you are willing to pay ALL of our
> legal fees if it came to that, we will remove your
> music if we do receive lawsuit threats.

Does this mean that if one person has a grudge against one of your artists, that all he need do is threaten legal action to get that artist silenced?

> We don't have the money to stand by someone in
> legal defense just because they posted something on
> our site.

I can't see how you'd be held accountable if you just pull the questionable material when it becomes a legal issue.

> We are luckly to be able to provide a platform
> for music and keep the site running. To have
> artists who voice their opinions in a derogatory
> manner causes what we worked many years for to be
> trashed.

Nonsense. Do people issuing political or antiwar messages degrade your system?

> We are not going to let a couple of artists
> take us down because of lawsuits (again
> we have not been presented with a lawsuit
> due to your music to this point).

We would never try to take you down. We would not be upset if you pulled the site due to legal concerns, as long as you kept us informed.

> This has happened in many cases before with
> other artists and other issues. The final
> result is we have removed their pages. Our
> site is privately owned so we decide what
> gets placed on our site and what doesn't.
> You can preach to us all day about free speech
> and how the Church of Scientology is
> brainwashing us but it won't affect us
> removing you from our site if we have to.

I haven't preached to you. I have told you how I feel. I am sorry that free speech is not one of your concerns, but I understand the reality of legalities.

> You can have a million anti Church of Scientology
> people email us, it won't affect us removing you
> from our site.

I didn't have anyone mail you anything. How come my fans are working under my orders, but the complainers are given the benefit of the doubt as to whether or not they are in Scn?

> If you don't agree with what this email explains,
> just let us know and we can go ahead and
> deactivate your account again.

You seem very upset. It was never my intention to make things this way. In the future - we can probably avoid such circumstances with better communication. I implore you to forward at least the gist of any complaints you receive about us. I have a very clear contact link on my page, but never got even 1 complaint. Doesn't that seem strange?

Also - the comedy genre is now gone from selection box on your home page. Is this permanent? Have you eliminated the comedy charts, and if not - will you return the stats to like they were before you removed my page?

Please let me know,
Queso