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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."
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.)
Mexico. United States. Not the same thing.
Hold my beer and watch this!
Would you, Sony?
Oh whoops
RIAA sister organizations around the world actually point to USA and screams "Be more like them!" when trying to roughshod legislation through... so it only seems fair.
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.)
There's a more important matter in here. This isn't about unauthorized material reproduction, but unauthorized material reproduction with the INTENT of making a profit.
Sony's screwed.
I'd like to see US law applied in the USA.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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 fact that the police raided Sony is enough to convince me that this will not be like the USA. At least Mexico gives a shit about their artists as individuals. The suit wasn't be a Mexican RIAA but by the artist himself.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.