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Apple Sued in France for iPod Music Royalties
alex_guy_CA writes "A musicians rights group in France is suing Apple Computer for back royalties due from iPod sales. It seems in France, all CDs, hard drives, and the like owe musicians money in case any of it is used for piracy. Only Apple isn't paying up." I want compensation from sales of Microsoft Windows just in case it is used for spreading viruses.
This does not bode well for Apple. As a Canadian I know we have the "Blank CD-R Tax", which is comparable to the French tax. There are at least 25 other countries that have similar taxes.
;)
If this French musicians rights group wins their case, this could set a precedent for other countries with comparable laws to sue as well.
As a musician, i feel embarrassed about this lawsuit.
On another note, cue the anti-french sentiment from a post-terror american centric peanut gallery... But at least this gives hope that the USA isn't the most litigious country in the world. Maybe you aren't #1 in everything after all.
They're only threatening to sue. It's the difference between french farmers being disgruntled and actually pouring manure on street intersections.
Politicus
Apple sets the selling price. Thats why every place that sells apples stuff does so at the same price. They can give you bonus deals, but the base price is fixed or you lose your apple reseller license. This is also what put all the third party apple stores out of business since they where forbiden from selling for less then the apple owned stores. Because of this, most apple products are purchased direct from apple and those that are not have their prices set by apple.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The SACEM is very much like the RIAA in France, so it is more accurately described as a "rights group" than as a "musicians rights group".
The tax mentioned exists, but wasn't created without an outcry from pretty much everybody in France, which of course didn't prevent the tax from being created. (Lobbies, lobbies everywhere.)
Like many people I highly doubt that any of the money collected this way goes into the pockets of "musicians". It definitely goes into some pockets, though.
I didn't know that the tax applied to hard disk drives, this was the point of hottest debate; I thought the government pulled back on that one.
Doesn't apply in France since, as in much of the EU, prices are fixed by the govt at MSRP in the name of "price parity". True advertised sales are allowed twice per year (3 weeks in each august and feb) and things are occasionally marked down but it's truly rare.
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
To be a bit more accurate than the news summary, in France, as in many other European countries, blank media has a long history of having an additional tax that is not aimed as at fighting piracy, but as a way to remunerate _fair use_. The money is passed on to the various artist unions that handle the distribution of royalties, and of course, Britney Spears and other American "artists" get a share of that.
I think it started with blank VHS tapes back in the 80s. More recently, CD-Rs and the likes, and even more recently, hard drives in general.
While it was questionable to tax hard drives in general, since many of them are not used to store media, it is hard to make a case for the iPod's hard drive to be exempt.
I personaly kind of like this system, which is by itself a better, more modern way of artist compensation than copyright is. Of course in France the two systems coexist, so you get the worse of both worlds.
- Activities of COPYSWEDE
(scroll down the page for information about the blank tape levies)
- Blank Tape Levy (PDF document with more detail)
Here's a quote summarizing it:
I personally find these levies very unfair as they're added to all recordable media and you're paying for the music and movie industry even when purchasing CD-R's to archive school work.
I also wonder how they decided what the fees should be. Wouldn't surprise me if they're much much higher (adds about 30% to the CD-R costs right now) than they should be, as people would probably not purchase two identical CD's very often if they were impossible to copy. Hence, in all these cases, they aren't losing money if these customers are copying today for convenience of playing a CD in the car stereo, etc. Usually, media companies and organizations like these totally ignore this important fact.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
This is not a "piracy tax", this is a "right to copy" tax. In France, we can copy anything but software as long as the source is legit (comes directly from the rights owner) and the copy is kept for our own private use.
Your friend buys a DVD, CD, book ? Copy it and keep it for yourself - it's legal.
Rent a movie, copy it, bring it back and watch the copy as much as you want - legal.
Buy a CD, copy it, sell it - legal.
Go to your media-hungry friend who owns thousands of DVDs, CDs, books and copy them - legal.
What iPod DRM? What iTunes music store downloads?
Since when has Apple been offering music downloads outside the US? I'm still getting a warning about that you need an US billing address.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
"Does that mean that organizations like the RIAA are prohibited from suing music downloaders because the musicians have already been paid by the state (perhaps through some industry group), or is this just a tax?"
Doubtful. France is a signatory to the Berne Convention and enforces copyright law about as well as any other industrialized country. Such a tariff wouldn't mean throwing out copyright law. Whether French law allows the IFPI (the European equivalent of the RIAA) to sue its citizens for copyright violation is a totally separate question.
By the way, a similar situation exists in the United States. Our taxes go to law enforcement and otherwise help pay for the wrongdoings of others, but the fact that, say, part of our taxes pay for our state's highway patrol doesn't allow us to ignore traffic laws with impunity.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
In Canada, the money is theoretically doled out in proportion to album sales. However, if you read this you'll notice that:
My understanding is you also have to be the copyright holder to get the money, which is not many musicians. In other words, both consumers and musicians are being fleeced by this inane law, and the only people making money are record companies and Celine Dion.
This is sadly just another example of influence peddling and corruption with our current government.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
First, it isn't a tax, it's a levy, which makes it a prepaid fee for copying privileges.
Canadians who've paid this levy (and who hasn't?) have paid for the copyright provisions that allow anyone to make a copy of someone else's licensed/owned copy of a musical work, LEGALLY.
How it works is this: I buy a CD. I can then loan that CD to any friend, and they can make one copy for personal use. Ad infinitum. They cannot, however, pass that 2nd gen. copy or a copy of that copy on to anyone else.
What it means in the online world is that it is perfectly okay for a canadian to download one copy of an audio work for personal listening. It is NOT okay to then upload a copy of that copy (yes, that breaks the normal practice of P2P networks).
So, canadians, leech on, you paid for it. And loan your CD's around to one person at a time, please. Otherwise, work to squash the levy, and we can move to the US IP laws version (why not we're dropping sovereignty everywhere else, eh! OK I'm bitter).
Damn those pesky terrorists
When I was there, everyone was more than kind to me, and I don't speak a word of French, the subways weren't the most pleasant smelling place I've ever been, but no worse than New York.
Ditto. I visited Paris last year, and with the exception of the customs agent checking passports at Gare Du Nord, people were not noticeably different towards me than anywhere else I've been. Having said that, I found that people in London were noticeably friendlier than folks here in the U.S.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
"My understanding is you also have to be the copyright holder to get the money, which is not many musicians."
First, let's clarify that there's a distinct difference between the copyright on a recording (which is typically held by the record company and/or the engineer) and the copyright on the music and lyrics, which is held by the lyricist and composer.
That would indeed suck if the Canadian tariff goes only to holders of the copyright on the recording. Here in the United States -- although many Slashdotters believe otherwise -- our blank CD-R tariff goes largely to musicians, lyricists and composers (some goes to record companies, but none of it goes directly to the RIAA). Part of it goes to the union representing session musicians, background vocalists, etc., so as a musician, you can benefit from the tariff even if you didn't write the words or compose the tune.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
The fact is that over 25 countries have instituted such a levy in some form or other. We here in Canada have the "Blank Media Levy" on CDs, tapes, and "digital storage in portable digital music recorders" which includes hard drives built in at the time of manufacture as well as Flash and/or RAM. The people who administer this levy (Canadian Private Copying Consortium or CPCC) have intimated that they will go after other hard drives in the future (the next round starts some time this month for implementation beginning of 2005)
The point is that the US people who lobby for this have not been as aggressive so today you don't have the levy on anything but the cassettes AFAIK; but you certainly could.
To those who think they should get some sort of compensation for their copied software, the Canadian Copyright Act actually leaves it open to potential groups to apply for and get status to do exactly that but it seems that nobody but the music publishers seem to be able to get together and actually do it (thank our lucky stars!)
As one of the people who directly opposed the CPCC in their recent initial request to apply a levy of $21 per Gigabyte for the storage in things like the iPOD, I can tell you that you can make a difference if you try. The actual levy approved by the Copyright Board was from $2 to a maximum of $25 per unit depending on how much storage it has in it when manufactured - and no levy on additional storage modules purchased after the fact. This and a hold at previous levels for CDs and tapes was actually quite a victory. I expect the fight over levies on regular PC hard drives will be every bit as hard when it comes.
Let this be a lesson to you - and let's see if you can apply it regarding the DMCA and other repressive legislation that your wonderful government (and the business lobby that pays it) are foisting on the world (see what is happening in Austrailia for example)
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
Oh, by all means, the ungrateful French owe the Russians far more than they owe us. And a good bit to the British as well.
As I recall, more Russians died at Stalingrad than did Americans during the entire war.
This would be funny if this weren't already implemented in my wonderful european country, where a per-copy tax is levied on photocopy machines. Yes, we're being taxed for copying our own internal documents.
I have no idea where exactly society is going, but it sure isn't moving in a direction that makes sense to me.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
... is really silly.
In WWI, the French held off the Germans for years. In the process, they lost millions of men. They essentially threw an entire generation of young men into the meat grinder, and held off the German advance. That takes balls.
In WWII, if either GB or the US had France's long land border with Germany, they would have been destroyed by the Blitzkrieg, just like France was. The only reason GB wasn't destroyed is the English Channel. The only reason we weren't is because of the Atlantic Ocean. Stalin had the Russian Winter as a natural barrier. What about France?
So the only reason we get to call the French cowards is a fluke of geography. That seems cowardly to me.
The enemies of Democracy are