Warner CEO Admits His Kids Stole Music

IAmTheDave writes "Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman admitted that he was fairly certain that one or more of his children had downloaded music illegally, but despite this direct admission of guilt, no lawsuits are pending. Surprised? Bronfman insists that, after a stern talking-to, his children have suffered the full consequences of their actions. 'I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that.' I wonder if all of the people currently being sued/extorted can now just claim that they 'no longer do that.'"

Comments

All people are equal

[fluch]

Just some people are more equal than other.

Sounds familiar.

And not surprising.

Re:All people are equal

[PoloniumSandwich]

"Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" - Animal Farm

Re:All people are equal

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the US Supreme court, copyright infringement is not stealing. That is a fact. It is incorrect to refer to downloading music as "stealing music." They are not the same thing.

Whether or not it is morally acceptable is a matter of individual opinion, of course. Personally, I think that assuming control of other people's hardware so that you can force them to "play along" with your technologically absurd business model is morally wrong.

Duplicating data is morally neutral (again, IMO).

Re:All people are equal

[Anonymous Coward]

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.
This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law.
Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court
and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.
                    o Life Line, 1939 - Robert Heinlein

Re:All people are equal

[MECC]

I think the point was that we the common folk get to surrender our life savings, educations, cars homes, etc., while the CEO gets off just giving his kids a stern talkning-to (okay, he's a CEO so it qualifies as worse that the talking-to I got as a kid).

The rest of us get to eat cake, it would seem.

Re:All people are equal

[quixote9]

Indeed. Why use RIAA's self-serving terminology? Consider the analogous situation in print media. You take a book out of the library. You read it. You return it. Royalties paid? None. Have you stolen something? Not in the wildest dreams of anyone except RIAA and their ilk. If downloads are for personal, temporary use, I don't see how they differ from checking a book out of the library. And I'd be willing to bet money that most songs have a pretty short shelf life on most people's ipods.

Re:All people are equal

[Salvance]

Yeah, and I'm sure the end of the speech went something like this: "Now bobby and amy, I hope you have learned your lesson. Now to show you my commitment to you downloading legal music, I've setup a $500/month automatic payment into each of your iTunes accounts. You need to learn that illegal actions have consequences. I hope this has taught you a lesson."

Re:All people are equal

[ktappe]

I think the point was that we the common folk get to surrender our life savings, educations, cars homes, etc., while the CEO gets off just giving his kids a stern talkning-to (okay, he's a CEO so it qualifies as worse that the talking-to I got as a kid).

Actually, I expect his kids got a speech something like this:

• Guys, I'm the f---ing CEO of Warner Music. How do you think it looks when my own family pirates music? C'mon, THINK!
• OK, we need to do some damage control: Here's $1000 for each of you from my pocket change. Go erase the downloaded files and buy legal ones. Hurry!

I assure you, the talkings-to I got as a kid did not go like that.

-Kurt

Re:All people are equal

[MECC]

The point is, that without a license to copy, you cannot copy.

I'm not disagreeing with that. The actual point of the original /. post was that the CEO got of scott-free, whilst the rest of us get in fact different treatment. And no, the mother with 5 kids just barely staying afloat being threatened with a lawsuit is not being 'sued the same' as a multi-millianaire CEO who gets of without so much as a 'pay a fine'. We all get the law we can afford.

If you are completely clueless

Ad homimen is admitting you have no meaningful point to make or things to say, and are just flinging insults in place of substantive discussion.

Re:All people are equal

[Firehed]

How about we make some sort of citizen's lawsuit on behalf of Warner against this guy and his family? The irony would just fill me with joy.

Re:All people are equal

[paeanblack]

Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well?

Are copyright extensions morally neutral? That sword cuts both ways.

Re:All people are equal

[r3m0t]

In the UK, a 20% sample of libraries have their borrowings tracked, and authors above a certain popularity get back some payment. However, it's by no means proportional to how many people took your book out. Their is a ceiling (about £6,500), a floor (£1) and a fixed pot (~£6.5mn). The current rate averages at 6 pence per loan. (This is from a book in front of me.)

Re:All people are equal

[PylonHead]

So, you're arguing that because it is easy to do, it should be legal/moral?

Your observation about the porn industry is odd too, since they all *charge* for their content, (the ones that don't are supported by advertising revenue from the ones that do). It's true that they don't waste a lot of time chasing copyright violators, but that's probably because they can produce their content cheaply enough that they don't need to. They can make money on $10 a month subscriptions.

People who want all their content for free ignore the fact that it takes money to create content. How do you get around this basic issue?

Re:All people are equal

[Moofie]

"It is just as morally wrong to copy a book and make it available for download as it is to copy a cd."

Which is to say, "not at all morally wrong".

Re:All people are equal

[StringBlade]

Do you find not compensating artists for their work to be morally neutral as well? Not at all, but I do find compensating record labels (not artists) in perpetuity for work they did not produce morally repugnant.

Re:All people are equal

[Obyron]

Because it would give their absurd definition of "theft" some amount of credence. If you reject it, reject it wholly, and loudly claim that it is no more "wrong" for the CEO's kids than it is for you. Their hypocrisy shows how hollow and profiteering their motives are. Even though hanging them with their own noose might seem fulfilling, we can't afford to give their crusade even the appearance of legitimacy.

Re:All people are equal

[Em Adespoton]

People who want all their content for free ignore the fact that it takes money to create content. How do you get around this basic issue?

People who want to make a profit off of content they have created ignore the fact that content is never made in a vacuum.

Look at Disney -- a large portion of their content is stolen from works that are now in the public domain. I know, I know, you can't "steal" from the public domain. Or can you? They're applying Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish model to stories that were once free for anyone to read/tell.

The trick is that when you're dealing with intellectual property, people get rewarded for providing the information in an easy to consume form. Once the information is available, it becomes a lot harder to make money from providing it yet again. Many "content improvers" attempt to improve content they really can't afford to create by starting from something they got for nothing, thereby keeping costs within the amount they expect to recoup by improving that content. Then, to make a profit for those who lent them the money they're using to do this, they try to artificially limit how people can share their "improved" ideas.

Now for the other side:

American Entertainment is run on the debt-driven economy. This streamlines a lot of the areas required for wide-scale collaberation. Advertising is really a way of loaning money up front and expecting a return on investment down the line. So is producing a movie. If we switched to a profit-driven economy, consumers would have to pay the costs up front, and content creators would have to produce within that budget, leading to smaller budgets and consumers with a vested interest in seing a quality return on investment.

In short, we wouldn't see the kind of entertainment that the current regime is able to produce. We wouldn't see the production of experimental material either -- people would make what the consumer currently wanted, nothing more.

Funny thing is, due to the profit maximization required by investors, that's pretty much how it has turned out with this method too.

--end ramble.

Re:All people are equal

[DaveJay]

Kind of trollish, but this is a legitimate question:

People who want all their content for free ignore the fact that it takes money to create content. How do you get around this basic issue?

I create content every week; I'm a musician, I write music for kids, and I perform it regularly. I record it, too, and I give it to people I know. I'll be recording an album soon, and since I want to go into a studio to have better production value, THAT will cost me money, and so I'll certainly be looking to recoup costs by selling the album. Hopefully I'll make a little extra, too.

But that part, the money part, isn't creating content -- it's creating content as a commodity item for sale, in an attempt to make a (teeny) profit. There's a big difference; I know people who have some of my songs on their iPods, and those recordings didn't cost me a dime, not even in labor, because I recorded them at home for my own personal enjoyment.

If the world is full of people creating music, and some do it for profit and some do it for love, what do you think will be left when the people doing it for profit leave the scene?

I'm not suggesting that would be a utopia, or even in the slightest bit desireable, of course. All I'm saying is this: content creation only costs money if you're trying to sell the content for a profit in today's market. Content creation on its own costs nothing but labor, and if it's a labor of love, you get emotionally paid.

Re:All people are equal

[E 99]

If the world is full of people creating music, and some do it for profit and some do it for love, what do you think will be left when the people doing it for profit leave the scene?

Um, less talented musicians?

content creation only costs money if you're trying to sell the content for a profit in today's market. Content creation on its own costs nothing but labor, and if it's a labor of love, you get emotionally paid.

Which means so much when it comes to paying a mortgage and educating and feeding your children. What if really talented musicians could actually make a living by creating music, so that they could do it all day long instead of only after they get home from their day job? Wouldn't that be better for everyone? Yes, it would.

Meh...welcome to Real Life

[StringBlade]

Life's not fair. People with power use it to their advantage. How is this news?

Next you'll be telling me that the President's daughters got drunk underage but nothing came of it.

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[LordSnooty]

Still a bit stomach-churning though. Why can't single mums etc. currently being sued for supposed infringement be given instead the option of issuing the kids with a stern bollocking?

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[bill_kress]

So because life's not fair we shouldn't care?

I suppose you'd have fit right in in Germany circa WWII.

No wonder our country is being dismantled, destroyed and fed to corporations. Because "life's not fair" and voting and taxes are our only responsibilities to it. Fixing it when it's broken and causing additional, unnecessary unfairness, well that's somebody else's problem.

Oh, and no, I don't know what to do about it either--but dismissing evil behavior offhand is not even a possibility.

I probably wouldn't have ranted if your post had been modded funny (as you probably intended) rather than insightful.

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[Bryansix]

That's a backwards argument if I ever heard of one. You would most easily be classified as a defeatist. Basically you argue that since people have been abusing power for ages and getting away with it that we should not even attempt to fight back. In fact you don't even think it is newsworthy and you don't want us talking about it. Wait a second; I just had an epiphany. Either you are an industry shill or you are defeatist. If that's a false dichotomy of the situation then be sure to call me out on it.

The point is that abuse of power, unfair application of the legal system and the justice system is always newsworthy and always worth fighting against. Not only that but the hypocrisy of this situation makes it all the more vulgar. If we got news that the head of MADD had some underage daughters who got drunk after school and they got the beer from their mom then maybe your analogy would make an inkling of sense. As it stands your analogy might as well be comparing asteroids to hemorrhoids. The two things have no relation so the analogy only serves to distract. So back on topic; this man deserves to have his children put on trial, his personal computer confiscated, his name smeared in the mud and his reputation shot to pieces because that is what he supports the RIAA doing in the same situation with consumers. That or he needs to confess that such a strategy is over the top and commit to changing the RIAA's ways.

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[spun]

So the solution is to throw up one's hands and say, "Feh. What can you do?" is it? Maybe when someone does something unfair we should instead say, "Hey, that's not fair!" in a very public manner. Using the assumed unfairness of life in order to excuse the unfairness of a particualar action smacks of circular reasoning.

Most people who use the phrase "Life's not fair" should also, for the sake of honesty, add the caveat "and not only don't I want to do anything about it, I don't want you to do anything about it, because then I would have to confront the fact that I am a lazy bastard who would rather be kicked around by life while maintaining the illusion of cynical detachement than actually take a stand against unfairness."

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[StringBlade]

There's a difference between being apathetic and choosing your battles. Am I upset that the CEO is showing blatant favoritism? Of course. Am I outraged to protest? Nope.

Let's just say that shouting and pointing fingers at how someone in power is using that power in unfair ways to minor effect (namely, if his kids got sued, they'd get the same "deal" as everyone else and the RIAA would make an additional $3,000 or so) is fairly unproductive.

Now, if I were someone who was being sued for downloading music, then I would have my lawyer get me off the hook on the technicality of the CEO's kids. That would serve two purposes: I would be free to go and make the RIAA pay my legal fees, and the matter would get very public attention (more so than Slashdot alone can provide).

On the other hand, if I'm sued for uploading music, that's a different story. He never claimed his kids were uploading music and it's fairly well-known that the RIAA doesn't really care about downloads if they can stop the uploaders there will be nothing left for others to download.

So again, you have to pick your fights and this is a very small one indeed to get too ruffled about. I'm much more concerned about corporate and political misbehaving that results in massive harm or damage to people in the U.S. and around the world. Everyone can take the high horse and say if they were king, they'd never bend the rules to help their own family and friends but most people would be lying when placed a real situation.

Re:Meh...welcome to Real Life

[Hijacked Public]

While I don't pretend to know or care what this guy or his kids deserve, or that what they deserve or don't even matters, what do you suggest be done about this particular incident?

Should we march in the streets? Organize a letter writing campaign? Print out a copy of the article and FedEx it to someone who is on trial for illegal sharing of music to use as a defense and hope that the court won't notice that the CEO admitted that his kids downloaded rather than shared music? Maybe we, or as many of us as would fit, hide in his bushes until he leaves for work in the morning and hit him with the face with a pie?

I don't know, maybe all of them.

Or maybe none.

Maybe it won't matter because it is going to be difficult to get enough people together who are fired up enough over the moral inconsistency found in the children of an RIAA company CEO downloading music while the RIAA prosecutes people who share music. I would guess that you will have a hard time getting very many people to pay attention to you long enough to even explain the situation to them, and without a large number of people getting involved neither Warner nor the RIAA nor the AP is going to care. Not while they have actual atrocities to report.

The only thing that will get attention is the thing no one seems to be able to do: Stop buying what Warner sells. Despite all the dander that geeks get up over **AA antics they do not seem to be able to prevent themselves from consuming their content, either by pirating it or by standing in line to see their movies, buy their games, consoles, music, etc.

neat

[tont0r]

Hopefully I can get my dad to give me a stern talking to after I rob a bank.

Re:neat

[malraid]

As long as your father is the owner of the bank, it should be viable. Otherwise, no chance.

Let me explain...

[John.P.Jones]

No, there's to much, let me sum up...

Life's not fair.

Can we seize all his computers at work and home?

[WillAffleckUW]

And insist on receipts for all music - and require that he purchased them, not just "reviewed" them?

And, as is done with most of those persecuted by RIAA, assume he is the one who pirated the music, not his kids?

Downloaders not being sued

[cdrguru]

If the music folks wanted to sue everyone that downloaded music, they would need to file against the entire country. Not going to happen.

Instead, they are being fiendishly clever in suing the people that are the suppliers for the downloaders. If you redistribute, you might get sued. Might. About a 1,000 in 300,000,000 chance, or 1 in 300,000. Most criminals take far worse odds in sticking up the neighborhood liquor store.

Punishment?

[Non-CleverNickName]

Bronfman insists that, after a stern talking-to, his children have suffered the full consequences of their actions.

Screw a stern talking-to.

Screw lawsuits.

I, for one, suggest that he lock his kids in the WB watertower.

Re:If the RIAA actually wants to make a statement

[DrLang21]

Actually the RIAA would do well to press charges. It would be evidence that their witch hunt is principled and not some grab for power. But then, I guess we are seeing the evidence against that.

I gave myself a stern talking to....

[fotbr]

So we're good then, right RIAA?

Text adventure style..

[Rob T Firefly]

You are the head of Warner. You have discovered your children downloading music.

There are children here.
There are illegal MP3s here.
There is a belt here.

Do you:

(W)hip the crap out of them with the belt,
(T)each them how to use TOR like everyone else so they don't get caught again,
(B)us them off to boot camp to learn about DRM,
(G)ive them the keys to your music vaults,
(O)rder the current crop of talentless-yet-popular acts whose souls you own to play a private concert for your children so they see the dazed, strung out, malnourished people they are supposedly stealing from,
(A)dmit that your business model is no longer relevant in modern society,
(S)ue their whiny little asses to make an example of them.

<

It's not stealing, it's just dishonest

[MikeRT]

When I have kids, I plan to tell that while it's technically not stealing, it's just plain dishonest. If a band, regardless of popular, has made music that they like and have copied, they owe the band a good faith effort to pay for the music. What's so hard about that? Even if you think it's not stealing, why is it so hard to say that you should compensate someone for making stuff you like? Don't even try the record label excuse because it actually does help a band out financially if you buy the CD since it helps them get out of debt. Since all of the bands I like are signed to a record label of some size, talk about not supporting the labels is for me, well, cheap.

Now if you want to nail the guy, you should get a reporter to ask him whether or not he classifies his kids' downloading as theft and if so, how does he feel as a father knowing that his kids are thieves. Let his own words save him or hang him high.

As for me, I have to snicker that an industry that has so thoroughly attacked Judao-Christian morality is finally reaping the socialist entitlement mentality whirlwind that it has sewn.

Re:It's not stealing, it's just dishonest

[Jtheletter]

I think you missed the original poster's point, when he said "an industry that has so thoroughly attacked Judao-Christian morality is finally reaping the socialist entitlement mentality whirlwind that it has sewn." The 'socialist entitlement mentality' bit doesn't refer to the music industry, but to the public at large who are using P2P and the like to share music. The common defense of which is usually something along the lines of "I want it but not for the price/restrictions that the music industry is demanding so I'll take it anyway and say 'damn The Man.'" That's the entitlement mentality at work. Now, whether or not this was brought on by the music industry attacking judeo-christian morality I'm not so sure. I think it's more a combination of having a highly demanded product, operating using monopoly and cartel business practices, creating artifical scarcity of something that is at the same time seemingly ubiquitous, and complaining about lost revenue while simultaneously raking in cash hand over fist. Not to mention extremely confusing and ever-shifting definitions of what, exactly, the consumer has purchased when they "buy" an album - is it licensed? is it owned? Do I own the song data or just the physcial CD? - and the rights that would therefore come with that product.

Anyway, I think the ubiquity of popular music coupled with the absurdly minimal costs of data copying today is what has lead people to feel entitled to music, if not free, then at least a lot cheaper then they can legally get it for. And really, can you blame us? The cost of an album hasn't really gone down for decades even though we can prove that one of the biggest costs to the music industry - distribution and physical media - has gone to nearly zero in the same period. That's the underlying problem the RIAA needs to address. People are on to their game and we aren't very happy about being manipulated into playing along.

Re:It's not stealing, it's just dishonest

[Mr2001]

There's a huge difference. The street musician is giving his stuff away for free and asking for a kind donation. The label musician is *selling* his stuff. Do you honestly not see a difference?

The only difference is in the musicians' attitudes. One of them demands payment, the other hopes for donations; but in both cases, the music has already been performed by the time anyone makes a decision about paying for it, and if the listeners decide not to pay, they haven't taken anything away from the musicians. Listening for free has exactly the same consequences in both cases.

People give away newspapers all the time (either promotions or actually free papers). Does that mean you're entitled to a copy free of charge from every paper at any time? I mean they're just sitting there in the box.

Now it's my turn to ask: do you honestly not see a difference?

Newspapers can only be in one place at a time. If I take a newspaper out of the box, that's one less newspaper that can be sold to someone else. If I take one, I have to compensate the owner for the loss of his newspaper. Music, on the other hand, cannot be taken away simply by listening to it or downloading it. You don't owe anyone compensation for listening to their song, because they still have everything they had before you heard it.

Now, if you can come up with a way to take a newspaper out of a box without reducing the number of newspapers in the box, then I'll reconsider my answer. I'll also nominate you for a Nobel Prize.

Re:If the RIAA actually wants to make a statement

[russ1337]

If you settle out of court with the RIAA you are not settling with the artist (and the settlement says that) Sooooo... the artist could still sue... which in this case would be an awesome move.

Yes, they are.

[KingSkippus]

suing the people that are the suppliers for the downloaders

Do you have any idea at all how peer-to-peer networks work? Every downloader is an uploader as well.

There's nothing clever, fiendishly or otherwise, about their plan. It's really stupidly simple: sue enough people so that word gets around that if you download music, you'll be sued. Then people will (theoretically) stop downloading music.

The problem with their stupidly simple plan is that it's not working. Why? Among other reasons:

• Most of the people downloading music illegally don't care if other people are getting sued. They'll only stop of they get caught, they get sued, and they are forced to stop.
• The industry is, in a lot of cases, going after the wrong people, and pursuing it relentlessly even after it's been demonstrating they're the wrong people. Now, there's a bit of the attitude going around that, if you're going to be sued anyway whether you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing, you might as well err on the side of having free music.
• The industry is punishing people who have absolutely nothing to do with trying to download music illegally. Witness Sony's rootkit fiasco, DRM that keeps us from listening to our music on devices that they don't approve of, attempts (that are successful in other places, *ahem* Canada...) to tax media that may (but probably not) be used for illegal purposes, collect royalties on devices such as the Zune and iPod that may (but probably not) be used to listen to ill-gotten music, etc.

I'm sorry, but "clever" is not an adjective that I would apply to any company associated with the **AA. Fiendish? Yeah, I can live with that one.

So... Since this guy is a billionare......

[8127972]

.... That means that the RIAA can sue him for millions. After all, they go after retired people and single mothers on fixed incomes for thousands of dollars. Right?

Downloading is advertising, NOT stealing

[openright]

Downloading is advertising, not stealing.

If I download a song from a questionable site, what happens?

1. I get non-DRM music.
2. I add to the popularity of the music.
3. If I would otherwise have paid $1 for the music, of which the artist would have got 2 cents, then I shorted the artist by 2 cents. And I denied 98 cents profit to a information exploiting company.
4. If I would not have otherwise paid for it (because I am poor, or because it is only available as DRM), then then I have shorted no-one, thought If I did not download it, the song would not gain in popularity.
5. If the artist is dead, then It is not possible to short the artist, only possible to short those that wish to make a living from the work of the dead.
6. If the artist wrote it 30 years ago and already made millions from it, then there is no moral reason to continue penny payments to the artists, or dollar payments to the company exploiting old works.

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This Must Be Nearly A Record

[Petersko]

"I suppose you'd have fit right in in Germany circa WWII."

It's subtle, but I think we might have a new record for the speed of execution of Godwin's Law. From a topic on Warner Brothers and the RIAA to Nazi's in 2 easy steps.

Re:This Must Be Nearly A Record

[halivar]

If there's two things I can't stand together in a discussion, it's the RIAA, and Nazi's. But I repeat myself.

actually it may have been perfectly legal

[jbr439]

Bronfman is Canadian. In Canada it is legal to download (but not necessarily upload) music. If Bronfman's kids were doing their downloading in Canada, then they were committing no offense.

It's not stealing.

[plopez]

It is copyright infringement if anything.

And it is a civil violation which must be enforced by the copyright holder.

This is probably a pointless post but remember a few things:
1) Piracy is a very specific offense and a felony. It has *nothing* to do with copyright infringement.

2) There is no such thing as intellectual property. Property has to have some sort of physical presence. Anything intellectual is by definition in a person's mind and therefore has no real physical presence. The works such as stories, plays, music etc produced by the mind can be restricted in distribution by copyright (hence copy + right). But it is *not* 'intellectual property'.

3) Stealing is a crime, unlicensed copying of copyrighted material is not.

We have been so brainwashed we think that 'music piracy' is 'stealing' and a 'crime'. It is not.

As I said. This is probably a pointless post as most people have it so deeply ingrained that there is no way to change thier minds on this.

But I may as well try.

Re:hello?? - the guy runs a music label

[Andy_R]

His kids probably wanted some decent independent label music, not the trash that Daddy's marketing department spends millions hyping.

bootleggers

[Potor]

the bronfmans made their money bootlegging liquor. this is delicious irony.

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A is A

[sacrilicious]

stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child.

Speaking in tautologies is one of the surest indicators that what's being said is dogma/indoctrination rather than reason.