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Copyright Troubles For Sony
ljaszcza writes "Daily Tech brings us a story about Sony's run-in with the Mexican police. (Billboard picked up the story as well.) It seems that they raided Sony's offices and seized 6,397 music CDs after a protest from the artist, Alejandro Fernandez. Fernandez had signed a seven-album deal with Sony Music; he completed that commitment and then left for Universal. During the time with Sony, he recorded other songs that did not make it into the agreed-upon seven albums. Sony Music took it upon themselves to collect that material and release it as an eighth album. Fernandez claims that he fulfilled his contract with Sony, and residual material belongs to him. Hmm. Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent. Seems very straightforward to me."
to feed our musicians again?
Would you, Sony?
The chances of being able to sue somebody over copyright infringement in the recording industry are a heck of a lot better than playing the lottery.
It's like winning 1000 lotteries at the same time! Screw the lottery!
Time for a career change? I can't sing or dance particularly well, but people can take lessons for that kind of thing.
Hush you! Quit raining on our parade!
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
But, Sony haven't actually distributed the music. They have merely burnt 6,000 backup copies. That's probably how they will get away with it.
Hey, get off the fence, will you? How do you really feel?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There is, we even have our own flag, it's just like yours, but on fire (Apologies to Rob Newman)
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
You forgot the $1,000,000 fine for each word of BS spewed out of Sony's corporate lawyers in issuing an official reply. Which leads to a grand total of ONE BAJILLION PESOS!!! or one hundred dollars.
I think the point was that Sony corp. made an official public statement by about what they feel a stolen song is worth, and filed it in court. Even if the case verdict isn't a legal precedent, surely the researched market analysis filed in a foreign court can still be cited as a fair assessment that is endorsed by Sony. (Ok, IANAL, and the case in the U.S.A. was probably some legally-independent entity, completely separate from the Sony-owned company in this case, but it still has to count for something.)
On a side note, I think it's totally awesome that Sony has given us such a great example of what the difference is between infringement and theft. :D
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)