In last week's raid [of Kim's Video] officers confiscated hundreds of CD's, seemingly concentrating on the shop's well-stocked section of hip-hop mixtapes. Five employees were arrested and spent the night in jail. All five were charged with failure to disclose origin of a recording in the second degree and trademark counterfeiting in the third degree.

After the raid, Brad Buckles, the recording association's executive vice president for anti-piracy, released a statement saying that the Police Department's "steadfast commitment to the fight against piracy has stamped out yet another significant illegal operation." It continued, "Retailers who are making money on the backs of musicians and record companies by selling pirated CD's should know that this is absolutely no way to conduct a business." Reached by telephone yesterday, Mr. Buckles confirmed that an association representative was present during the raid.

Note that phrase "musicians and record companies." In its war against illegal music distribution, the association has often treated these two groups as one and the same, arguing that piracy-happy fans are hurting the artists they love. But when it comes to hip-hop mixtapes, it is in a trickier position: the artists themselves often help produce the same mixtapes that the association is trying to squelch, and shrewd record labels long ago figured out that mixtapes can help drive sales of conventional CD's.

So while record labels donate money to honor a man who helped promote mixtapes [hip-hop mixtape promoter, Justo Faison, recently killed in a car-crash], the trade group representing the labels cracks down on those who sell them. And who goes to jail? Well, suffice it to say that the police haven't arrested any of the major-label record executives who profit from the hype generated by mixtapes.

JayMole - as a former employee, could you give some details as to Kim's shady practices?

According to the district attorney's office, (Kim's 2nd Fl Mgr) Bettis and the others were ultimately charged with failure to disclose origin of recording in the second degree and trademark counterfeiting in the third degree, both misdemeanors.

Ultimately Mr. Kim is taking full responsibility, stating, "I'm the owner of Kim's. My employees had nothing to do with it. I am the final person responsible for it." Kim was issued a desk appearance ticket by the D.A.'s office this week, and a court date is set for mid August.

Kim continues: "The reality is this. We have 120,000 titles of CD. The police seized 51 title, from my counting, which are mostly hip-hop that are mixed by DJ. For us it's really hard to know what's in there, all DJ and artists that [have a track on] a hip-hop mix. It is very hard to check what's in there. Every CD we couldn't listen to before we buy. If you had any knowledge about the hip-hop and what they took from us, those CDs have very clear information on who made it and the name and phone number, because we purchase from them."

The police also seized Kim's cash register money and computer server, paralyzing all buying and renting. When the store reopened about six hours later, [Sean] Williams (asst. mgr. rentals) says, employees had no choice but to handwrite all transactions. At the time of this writing, the computers still had not been replaced. Williams adds, "They have all our customers' files, and they could be doing something with that for all we know. Patriot Act stuff. You know, all the people who rent porno here and wanna run for office, stuff like that. That's something that's kinda interesting too. They're not letting us know what they're doing with their computers."

One employee, speaking under conditions of anonymity, believes Sony-Columbia record executives were among the dozen or so police officers who executed the raid. "One guy from the label went around with the managers, looking for certain things. He didn't say that he was [from] Columbia, but the titles that he pulled, to check to see if they were bootlegs or not, were Columbia artists." Sony-Columbia insists it had no direct involvement with the raid.

Williams also suspected it was label-motivated, however, describing the pair of men he thought were execs as "a couple of California moustache guys that didn't seem to know the neighborhood." He adds, "I saw that when they were trying to order their food, they came outside, trying to figure out [where they were]." After kicking out the employees, Williams says, the police had a "pizza party" on the music department floor, in sight of all the barred employees standing outside.

Though no non-music DVDs were seized, Williams believes the Motion Picture Association of America may have played a role in the raid as well; an MPAA spokesperson confirmed their presence at the raid. Buckles added, "We've quite frequently worked with MPAA. As the equipment and the raw materials needed to engage in piracy have merged, so have the operations."

As for the nature of video bootlegging around New York, Williams had this to say: "There's other smaller video stores that do it too, have a couple of bootleg movies of things that aren't available. I mean as soon as something becomes legitimately available, [they] always replace the bootlegs. [They] don't like having them, but when things aren't available, that's why [they] have them, and everybody knows that."

Immediately after the raid, Mr. Kim's other stores took action. According to Williams, despite a similar raid that occurred at their store nearly seven years ago, Kim's Video does not plan on buying or selling bootlegs anymore. The store plans to fill with music imports the shelf space that had formerly been used for mix tapes.

"If you have any idea about Kim's," explains Mr. Kim, "[it] is very well-known for underground artists—musicians, and filmmakers. We are the biggest supporters nationwide for the underground artist. We always support their work before they become very famous. We have a strong platform for those underground filmmakers and musicians. The hip-hop that the police seized have a very little platform for those artists. Otherwise I don't see what we did wrong at all. Period. We are serving the poor, young, very experimental artists nationwide—I should say the worldwide."