EMI Caught Offering Illegal Downloads

Hypocricy, LLC writes "While the RIAA is swift to punish any person caught offering illegal downloads, they're not very swift with outrage when a member company like EMI offers illegal downloads. Not only did the band King Crimson's contract never allow digital distribution to begin with, but band member Robert Fripp claims that EMI offered their music for sale even after their contract ended entirely."

Comments

Good for King Crimson.

[The Iso]

Contrary to common practice, KC owns the copyrights to their work.

In Germany, too

[saibot834]

The GVU (The German Federation against Copyright Theft) actively used and supported illegal Filesharing by setting up their own servers from which users could download copyrighted stuff. Of course they didn't bother asking the copyright owner if this was ok, they just did it, until Heise.de revealed the story (German Site) and the Office of Public Prosecutor came...

Re:We all knew this..

[MightyMartian]

To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, the record companies used to be owned by greedy bastards who liked music, now they're just owned by greedy bastards.

This is what happens when the accountants and lawyers seize complete control, and the old-fashioned A&R guys are basically put in the position of the quickest bang for the buck. The record companies, by and large, are parts of big vast corporate machines owned by shareholders that could care less whether they made records, washing machines or F14 landing gear. Some guy up on the nine-millionth floor Big Bloated Monster Corp. says "the unit that owns recording and condom manufacturering isn't performing well this quarter, what's the explanation?" "Well, Mr. President of Big Bloated Monster Corp., people seem to be fucking less and there's this Internet download thing." "Get the lawyers. Sue everyone who downloads music and doesn't fuck."

Re:Seriously,

[SiChemist]

There are mistakes and there are "mistakes". Did you read the post on Fripp's blog? He says:

A general comment on large record companies: inefficiency in departments can rarely be remedied by outside parties who lose because of it. This is a full-time job, is very expensive, a major distraction from the creative life, and almost wholly a negative experience. This is the good news.

The bad news: this is known by the company, and allowed for within its operating structure. That is, efficiency is not seen as being in the direct interest of the record company - because it profits from its carelessness.

If this is true then at the very least EMI is deliberately not carefully accounting for the music they sell-- because they profit from sloppy accounting. In any other industry, this would be considered fraud. Somehow, the record labels can get away with it.