It's a shame this article from Ireland's Sunday Tribune is behind subscription because it's an excellent roundup of an underreported (for reasons that will be explained) controversy afflicting the Irish Internet: namely the zeal with which MCD, the dominant concert promoter in Ireland, has squelched discussions of goings-on in the campsite at their Oxegen festival in Kildare a few weeks ago. As various Irish bloggers have chronicled, any forum that hosts criticism of security at the event becomes the target of the dreaded solicitor's letter i.e. an unfriendly cease-and-desist upon threat of legal action from MCD's lawyers. As Irish blog pioneer John Breslin discovered, the letter arrives without any previous communication, leaving him with little choice to bar any related discussions from the boards.ie site that he manages.
In addition to details that you can find elsewhere, one damning little section in the Trib article is a compare-and-contrast on statements issued by Garda superintendents in Naas and Mullingar following separate MCD-promoted events: in each case, the post-event press release is a bland move-along-folks-just-a-few-drug-arrests thing, almost identically structured and worded. One would hate to think that the Garda are simply issuing press releases provided for them by MCD, so let's hope that's not the case.
The Trib concludes by noting that MCD had asked them for the contact details of concert-goers who had complained to the Trib about concert security -- so that, as MCD says, they could follow up the complaints. It'll be interesting to see whether, if MCD found no evidence for such a complaint (and what evidence would there be at this point?), that these people would not themselves receive the dreaded solicitor's letter. Incidentally, this plague has been popping up elsewhere in the Irish blogging world, although we were pleased to hear that Free Stater has had no unpleasant surprises in the post recently.
UPDATE 3 SEPTEMBER: Adam Maguire notes that MCD can dish it out but can't take it.
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