Oggetto: Comunicazione importante all'Artista Lou Reed





Dear Mr. Reed



My name is Fabio Del Toro. I am the President of the "Circolo di Cultura Musicale Sing Sing of Arezzo and Siena" association.

Our Association, whith more than 12,000 members, has been sued by you (Lou Reed) and other artists as plaintiffs.

We, the defandants, have lost the first trial in 2005. Your lawyers have requested and obtained the seizure of the Association's belongings as part of the one million Euros settlement.



As defendants, we were denied the means to contact the plaintiff in order to find out if the plaintiff was aware of the lawsuit.

Also, the powers of attorney that have been submitted with your signature at the beginning of the lawsuit were copies (never originals).

These facts urged us to investigate the matter further, we decided to find out more about your power of attorney and went to New York to find the records of the notarization. No traces of the documentation have been found at the Certification Unit of the New York Department of State. This outcome gives us reason to doubt of the authenticity of the document.



We have the suspicion that you don't even know that you are suing us. If this were true it would be damaging to both parties.

If you did know that you are suing us, probably you would not know why and what the facts are. I cannot believe that an artist like you can be opposed to what we are doing and I have the feeling that our organization might have been misrepresented to you.



The consequences of your civil action have brought the matter to the attention of the Corte Costituzionale (our Supreme Court) as possible infringement to the Articles 2,3 and 18 of the Italian Constitution.



I will try to explain in a few lines what we do and who we are:



I presume that you are familiar with the Public Library system of New York. We function in a similar way. We have members, who in return of an annual membership fee and other voluntary contributions, have access to a variety of music and other multimedia, which encompasses mainstream and less known artists. They can listen to the music in the Circolo’s premises or take it home, listen to it and return it. We are not a for-profit business who follows a “Blockbuster” model.



We do not understand why you, other artists, and record companies have the impression that we are big criminals who are causing immense damages to artists and record companies. Our mission is to give access to music to everyone in a country where access to music has become a privilege for the few who can afford it.



Since you are in Italy, the association I represent and I would like to have a chance to hear from you or, even better, meet you in an informal way to show what we really are doing. Should your schedule allow it, Mr. Reed, you are warmly invited to visit us and can judge by yourself if what we are doing deserves to be “punished” or if it is a legitimate way to give access to music to the people. Knowing the artist you are and the cultural background you have, we are confident that you will not ignore us.



We want to assure you, that we by no means want to include a possible contact with you in the ongoing legal dispute. We are a little association with little means and have a giant adversary ready to crush us. Our only hope is a little humanity, talking to the artists and asking them if it is really their intent to fight us, or if it is a battle started by the record companies without their knowledge. The right to see our accusers or a way to contact them has been denied to us in court. I don’t want to bother you with all the details, unless are interested in this matter. I will gladly provide further details, like a copy your power of attorney, to prove that this is not a stratagem of a fan or deranged person to meet you.





If you would like to find out more about this matter, visit this site:
http://www.circoloculturale.com/





Il Presidente del Circolo Sing Sing

Fabio Del Toro