A north Louisiana prison sold illegally pirated copies of recordings by hundreds of artists, including the Rolling Stones, Eminem and Garth Brooks, to inmates and visitors for $3 per compact disc, according to a record company’s lawsuit.
The suit alleges that the Claiborne Parish prison gave incoming inmates a list of 330 rock, rap, country and R&B records available through the commissary. An inmate copied CDs requested by prisoners or visitors, said Roy Maughan Jr., the lawyer who filed the suit for Baton Rouge-based Utopia Entertainment.
“You’d just tell them what you wanted, and they’d burn you a copy,” Maughan said Tuesday.
The defendants are Claiborne Parish Sheriff Kenneth Volentine; LaSalle Management, the private company that manages the men’s portion of Volentine’s jail; and state inmate Bo Fain, who allegedly copied the CDs on a computer in a prison office.
Utopia, which produced three records on the prison’s CD list, is seeking $150,000 in damages for itself and other parties whose copyrights were violated. Maughan said other record companies have expressed interest in joining the suit, filed Friday in federal court in Shreveport.
Maughan said money from the CD sales went into an “inmate welfare fund.” He was unsure how much money the prison made from the recordings.
William McConnell, a manager at LaSalle, said two of his workers were investigating the allegations on Tuesday. He declined to say whether he disputed the lawsuit’s charges.
“If it occurred, it would be a violation of our policies,” he said.
McConnell said the company is considering asking prisoners to return any CDs they bought, then search the cells of inmates who refused to give them up voluntarily.
LaSalle oversees the day-to-day operations of the jail, where all employees work for the sheriff. LaSalle helps to run or owns part of six jails in northern Louisiana.
The Sheriff’s Office is also investigating the allegations, Chief Detective Chuck Tally said. Volentine was traveling Tuesday and unavailable for comment, but Tally said the sheriff had not been served with the suit.
Fain ran Centsible Systems, a Shreveport computer business, before he was convicted and sentenced to 12 years for aggravated incest. He was held in the Claiborne prison for about two years, working as an inmate welfare fund representative. He was recently moved to a state prison in Keithville, in Caddo Parish.
Other artists on the CD list included Elvis, rappers Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur and numerous Christian groups.
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Source:
TheAdvertiser
