News: “Darkness” Singer Tackles eBay Leak

November 10th, 2005 by Laurie Barak

The Darkness singer Justin Hawkins paid £350 (about $609 US) for a copy of his own band’s new album on eBay a month before its release to stop it being leaked. The CD was sent to a small number of record company figures and journalists around the world but found its way onto the auction site in Australia, he said. Hawkins plans to find the culprit by using the CD’s unique ID code.

“I’ve bought our own album back off this character who’s selling it on eBay,” the Hawkins told the BBC News website. “It’s encoded so we’ll have a name and a number - so we’ll know which disc it is, who distributed it and who they distributed it to. And that person is going to go down. He is either going to get some sort of legal intervention or he certainly won’t receive an album from our record company ever again.”

Hawkins said the band had been stringent with who they had given the album to in the UK. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents UK record labels, said the scale of counterfeit and unauthorised selling on eBay had got “out of hand”. “Time and again, we have seen eBay being abused by individuals seeking to make a quick profit on the back of our members’ copyrights,” a BPI spokesman said.

An eBay spokesperson said their rules did not “specifically prohibit” the resale of advance CDs.

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British band The Darkness, with the lead singer looking very Freddy Mercury-esque.