Alabama man put on probation for bootleg recordings

LAFAYETTE, La. — An Alabama man has been placed on three years of probation for selling pirated copies of live musical performances.
Carl Lee Lackey, 46, of Anniston, Ala., pleaded guilty in March to conspiring to traffic in unauthorized recordings between January 1996 and August 2002.
Lackey said he started selling the bootlegs at his store, Slip Disk CDs in Homewood, Ala., as music sales began to decline. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Doherty ordered him to serve six months home confinement during the probation and fined him $2,500.
In a related case handled in August, Timothy S. Hummel, 54, of Metairie, was put on probation for three years and fined $1,000. He pleaded guilty in March to obtaining CDs from an unidentified source in Lafayette to sell at his New Orleans store, Mushroom Records.
Hummel forfeited 502 CDs and 43 videotapes.
U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon sentenced Jeanette Whited of Fort Payne, Alabama, to a year of probation in April. She pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffic in bootleg recordings to be sold at her store, Music Connections. She also was ordered to repay the Recording Industry of America $3,264.
A case is pending against Tal Kolin of Orlando, Fla., who’s accused of conspiring to traffic in unauthorized recordings of five live performances. Authorities said he sold the CDs at his store, CD Music, between August 1997 and November 1998 after he paid $23,500 to an unnamed person from Lafayette who made the copies.
Authorities seized 1,027 CDs in January 1999.