Slashdot Mirror
Rockers Sue Sony Over Download Royalties
Ohreally_factor writes "According to an AP article, groups Cheap Trick and The Allman Brothers allege that Sony is paying them less than what they deserve for music downloaded from popular download sites such as iTunes. Because Sony counts such sales as the equivalent of a physical phonorecording sale, they deduct costs for packaging (20%) and breakage (15%) from the artists' royalties, just as they would if they were selling CDs through more traditional means. Seeing as how there is no physical packaging, nor physical inventory that might suffer breakage, one wonders how Sony will defend against these charges."
RTFC (Read the fuckin' contract) and note your signature at the bottom, guys. You agreed to this. Should've thought about that before signing yourselves away to a corporate babylonian whore like Sony.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The "breakage" charge has been bogus for quite some time. It really applied in the days of actual records, a lot of which wouldn't survive shipment. How many CD's (or tapes for that matter) end up broken per shipment? Definitely not 15%. So far they have been able to make this stick regardless. Now it's just completely ridiculous, versus just mostly.
I love all of those "extra" charges and surcharges and other BS tactics that companies are doing more and more of. I had one of those PODS storage units, and when I set up the account with them, they asked me if I wanted "POD insurance". It was only 5 bucks and I was under duress at the time, so I said "OK". They then billed me that $5 every month, until I asked them to retroactively take it off of my bill.
That is a complete scam. I asked them "What is POD insurance giving me?", and the script said, "Its to insure that the POD will not be damaged, not the contents inside of the POD". To which I replied. "OK, the POD is your property, and its currently being stored on your property. What kind of liability do I have for your property on your property?"
The person immediately took all charges off of my credit card.
I hate assholes like that. Otherwise, I was happy with the POD system, but it was a little pricey...
You're so full of shit.