Rise, Robots, Rise!

Now here’s something that you rarely see: underground electro in that prefered organ of the right-wing reactionaries, the Daily Mail  (this story was also reported on in other, equally enlgihtened publications, the Sun, the Daily Express and the Daily Star). Apparently Celine, one of the fashion houses owned by Louis Vuitton, the company that makes those wonderfully tasteless bags that people with too much money proudly buy, decided to use music by Sneak Thief that the label released as a soundtrack for its catwalk shows. It also sampled the track on its website to promote its latest collection, dahling. The label rightly took umbrage at a huge fashion corporation using its music wihthout permission and initiated legal action. The upshot of it all is that Louis Vuitton stopped using the music and made an undisclosed settlement with Mighty Robot. The brilliantly named David Bowie, who runs the label, says that he was inspired by UR’s legal wrangles with Sony during the 1990s over ‘Jaguar’. Usually, all you hear are stories of the major labels bullying P2P / download sites or taking actions against individuals, so it’s heartening to learn that the smaller organisations can turn the tables and beat the corporates…