There is a new gun in town called Web Sheriff

Web Sheriff showed up on NJN this week, all nice and pleasant telling everyone where they could find “legit” versions of the Santa video.

Oooh very scary boys and girls. They were the one’s – or so I’m led to believe – that yanked down our YouTube account when after 100,000 views of [i]Beyond Here Lies Nothing [/i]

Well pardon me for getting 100,000 people to think Dylan might be a relevant modern artist. I’ll keep that to myself next time.

They do this by hand – just Google searching for miscreants who post songs or videos – and then send out warnings and take down orders.

It’s rather ironic and pathetic all at once.

One of the name artists they worked for before Dylan was Van Morrison. Apparently there was a “ring” posting Van the Man’s music. So Web Sheriff shut it down.

Um, who cares about Van the Man, except drunk girls in bars at 2 am when they demand the house band play “Brown Eyed Girl” one more time.

Bob Dylan defines an artist who has thrived with bootlegging. I saw estimates a few years ago that his gross revenue was $100 million annually. The joke was he makes $10 million on January 1st every year from royalties.

Why the sudden interest in closing down people who post songs and videos?

My theory is that those people are keeping up public interest in Dylan.

In any event, 4 decades of Dylan bootlegging won’t go away with Web Sheriff. It will just go slightly underground.

If Dylan was successful, he might destroy his whole dedicated fan base. That would be smart.

Related story – Meet the Web Sheriff

Don’t expect Web Sheriff to go away. They make money at the job.