Roxy Monoxide Record Ripped Off

“It’s kind of disheartening to put so much work into a CD, get it up on iTunes and Amazon, and then have someone just make it available for anyone to steal,” says singer-guitarist Scott Samuels of Roxy Monoxide, whose album Another Day, Another Episode has turned up as an illegal download on RapidShare, Megaupload, and BitTorrent websites.

“I’ve been trying to track down the guy who keeps posting our CD to file-sharing sites. He seems to be huge into uploading, and I want to send him a personal cease-and-desist, but at this point I don’t expect it will do any good. As far as I can tell, he’s from Europe, probably Greece. Our bass player Darko, who’s from Serbia, says file-sharing is much more prevalent and acceptable over there, and there seems to be little threat or consequence for anyone who illegally uploads or downloads CDs, movies, and software.”

Megaupload, based in Hong Kong, calls itself a “storage and file delivery” service, with no registration required to upload and share files up to 1GB. RapidShare is a Swiss- and German-owned site that hosts large files both for free and for pay. BitTorrent is a free, open-source file-sharing application effective for distributing large software and media files, often misused to circulate unlicensed and unauthorized copyright-owned content.

Digital piracy isn’t the band’s only recent challenge. Formerly known as a female-fronted rock group, they’re currently an all-male four-piece; Dave Gladish has been replaced on guitar by Tim Bennett (A.M. Forever), and female singer Coree Levy has left to pursue chiropractic college in L.A.

“We’ve had a succession of female singers over the years,” says Samuels. “Tracy DeZenzo, Diana Sun, a very brief period with Laura Roppe, and most recently Coree. I’ve always shared lead vocals, singing about 40 percent of the material, most of which I write, so it’s usually well suited to my voice.”

Roxy Monoxide appears October 28 at the Tiki House in P.B.