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Copyright Troubles For Sony

Posted by kdawson on from the billion-here-billion-there dept.

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."

4 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Some counterpoints by Hitman_Frost · · Score: 5, Informative

    One point regarding Jammie Thomas. She actually had 2500 illegally obtained tracks on her PC, but was only prosecuted for a handful of them so the $K22.5 I often see bandied around isn't strictly accurate.

    Sony are clearly in the wrong here however. Unless the contracts says music created during those recording sessions, not the songs that reached the final albums. As we haven't seen the contracts I wouldn't like to speculate.

    (Just being the Devil's Advocate, guys.)

    1. Re:Some counterpoints by pipatron · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, except musicians and artist are normally not employed by the record companies. The article clearly says a seven-album deal.

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    2. Re:Some counterpoints by deathy_epl+ccs · · Score: 4, Informative

      Except for record contracts are NOT employment contracts. The bands are not employed by the record companies, the contracts are usually for the set number of albums. By standard recording contracts, the artist in this instance is the one who's most likely right.

  2. Re:If only... by sopssa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why does the summary talk about "Precedent from the Jammie Thomas" when this case is in Mexico, while Jammie Thomas was in USA? Precedent's in USA aren't precedents everywhere (how many times this shit has to be told to americans?) and most of other countries actually have sane amount of compensations in copyright infringement cases, unlike USA.