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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."
You just know they'll find some way to weasel out of it...
Mexico. United States. Not the same thing.
Hold my beer and watch this!
at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs,
Sorry, but you fail. The big companies may be evil, but they aren't stupid. You may only count the 8 songs once. Scratch that. As those song were distributed as one unit, so you can make a good argument for a total count of 1 infringement.
The reason for the $150,000 number in the law was exactly because it was aimed against large scale infringement like the one we are talking about here, but that has just made it even more effective (cruel and unjust) against small scale distributed infringment.
Where did you get the idea that the Mexican Police was bribed?
There is nothing about that in TFA.
Besides, raids on suspected copyright infringers are nothing new. There have been similar raids on The Pirate Bay, and Sony certainly operates on a comparable scale. That is not some school kid who shares a few albums on his computer.
If the allegations are true, this is a case of commercial copyright infringement. A rather big fish, certainly bigger than Tenenbaum or Thomas.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Another point on the same topic. What the fuck does American precedent have to do with Mexico?
Oh whoops
If you have a contract to produce a certain number of albums, but you also sign over ownership of your works during the contract, then the songs you produce during your contract even if they don't make it to an album belong to Sony (or whoever).
IANAL and it depends on the fine print, but there's a good chance this guy is boned.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Usually whoever pays the costs of the studio owns the mechanical copyright.
Although what annoys me about that line of reasoning is that record companies reclaim the recording costs from the artists share of the profit, and so should forfeit any ownership.
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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.
How can you clearly state the company is in the wrong when you have no information about the contract, as you admit yourself? Not only do you speculate, you state your made up opinion as matter of fact. Get off your Sony hating horse, just face up to it, their contracts are written by very highly paid experts. There is very likely to be a clause that allows them to do this.
If any Cd's were to be sold in the US, they are culpable here in the US.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Did Sony provide facilities for recording the disputed songs? Still, what's in the contract is binding...
No. Sony simply provides the artist a loan -- Sony pays all the cost of producing the album up front, but all of the costs must be recouped through album sales before the artist sees any income. Even after that, Sony will still take the vast majority of the profits (usually around 80% if you are lucky), which is why I have an aneurysm every time I hear the RIAA say they are doing something "for the artists".
As ownership of the tracks -- it is all about what is in the contract. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sony lawyers have some sort of loophole written into the contract to protect them from liability in this matter, being the bottom-feeding vermin that they are.
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
While I think ljaszcza's claim of precedent is flimsy, at best, I do hope that Sony is absolutely smashed in court over this. This is _commercial_ piracy. This is piracy-for-profit. If non-commercial piracy between individuals carries penalties of tens-of-thousands of dollars per song then commercial piracy damn well carry a significantly heftier fine. After all, _THIS_ is the sort of thing that copyright law is intended to protect against - someone making money off of someone else's work without their permission. _THIS_ is what the law is supposed to protect against. With a hint of luck, the law will actually do something about it rather than look the other way.
Wouldn't it be nice if the group involved in drafting ACTA were made aware of this. After all, I'm sure Sony has been involved in "suggesting" elements of the ACTA proposal so I'm sure any punishments they've suggested they would be comfortable with paying...
The Big Corp in media always tell us how they fight non-profit copyright infringement to help the artists, and here Sony may have been caught infringing an artist's copyright with intent to profit from it. This makes Sony's action more wrong than that of Jammie Thomas et al. on two levels: legally (because it is for profit) and morally (they screwed over the person they claimed to protect and support).
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
You guys are missing a key point that shows that Sony is not going to be distorted but they aren't getting off the hook totally ether.
From TFA:
Sony announced it was creating an album of Fernandez' previously recorded music, which Universal protested.
The lawyers over at Universal have already read the contract and while they might know they will loose at trial they are betting Sony will settle...