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Spanish Copyright Society Raided For Embezzlement
esocid writes "Senior officials in Spain's Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE), the country's leading collection society for songwriters and composers, face embezzlement charges in the wake of a Friday raid on the organization's offices. Investigators say Jose Luis Rodriguez Neri, the head of an SGAE subsidiary called the Digital Society of Spanish Authors (SDAE), made payments for non-existent services to a contractor that then paid kickbacks to Neri and his associates. SGAE, the Spanish counterpart to American collecting societies like ASCAP and BMI, is known for its high fees and aggressive enforcement tactics. According to El País, 'the society has been often accused of exceeding its remit by going as far as to infiltrate private weddings to check whether fees had been paid for the music being played at the banquet.'"
They criticize pirates but can't keep their hands out of the booty.
Wait and watch. The worst that can happen is the corporation will take the fall. The individuals will get off free (maybe with golden parachutes) a la SCO.
This kind of behavior is well-known, and the SGAE and all its branches are known to be leeches by several villages/small cities, they have even disrupted weddings in order to charge people for copyright violation...
Spain loves to imitate the US, but generally half-asses it, so it's not surprising for a RIAA-wannabe to be such a walking disaster.
However, despite everyone knowing they are leeches, they still have free action to do as they please. This will have little effect on their activities on the long run.
...The individuals will get off free...
Embezzlement is different than excessive executive compensation and is illegal in most places. Note that TFA says there was a raid and that they face "fraud, misappropriation of funds and disloyal administration" and that a High Court judge grilled him for more than four hours over the charges.
I suspect that they will not "get off free".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
They criticize pirates but can't keep their hands out of the booty.
Making them privateers outside the bound of their letters of marque, then? I say... hang them.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Parent is SPAM
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Making them privateers [wikipedia.org] outside the bound of their letters of marque, then? I say... hang them.
Might be hard to find a yardarm on their building though...
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
They criticize pirates but can't keep their hands out of the booty.
The captain's parrot got his claw in the tambourine.
--
Avast, nothing to see here. Move along matey.
IFPI Boss and CEO Accused of Tax Evasion in Germany http://www.zeropaid.com/news/94106/ifpi-boss-and-ceo-accused-of-tax-evasion-in-germany/ After the SGAE, Germany investigates IFPI and its dome accused of tax fraud http://en.wikinoticia.com/Technology/general-technology/90182-after-the-sgae-germany-investigates-ifpi-and-its-dome-accused-of-tax-fraud
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
At least 3 SGAE/SDAE bosses are facing prison charges. Two of them are in prison now (they didn't pay their EUR 300,000 & EUR150,000 bailouts). Another one of remains free for now but he faces charges of up to 10 years for one of the crimes and 12 more for another one --at least.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
So what you're saying is that the issue is differring views of how a reasonable person might interpret the contract.
Sounds like a civil matter.
/IANAFL
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You aren't from Spain, are you?
Even if it's proved that the used the royalties money to enrichen their consulting companies, I will not bet on they entering prison.
At least with politicians it is always more complicated than that.
Except that this association has acted in the last deade with an unlimited greed. They even demanded a play made by disabled people, for they wanted their money.
In retrospective, being so greedy in their work, it seems easy to guess they would be just as greedy in life, so they couldn't get their hands off the booty.
Embezzlement is different than excessive executive compensation and is illegal in most places.
Depends on who does it.
Here in Luxembourg, the director of a charity (Transfair) affiliated with the ruling CSV party embezzled funds by buying fake services from her husband (who operates a web hosting company). She didn't get any problems from this...
A couple of month later, a member of parliament of the ill-liked ADR party does the same thing (gets a fake bill from a friend of his who operates an IT business, and gets that bill "refunded" by parliament), and he's sued and it's all over the news.
Moral of the story: if you want to embezzle, be affiliated with people in power.
They criticize pirates but can't keep their hook out of the booty.
Fixed for ya.
Moral of the story: if you want to embezzle, be affiliated with people in power.
The same is true of most crimes.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Criminal organization does crimes. News at 11.
Seriously, what do you expect from organized crime? (= The record distribution [well, not anymore, that's the point], litigation and artist extortion industry.)
You might want to look the definition of "crime". Hint: it's not "somehing I disagree with"..
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think that, since Watchmen, it's hardly pretentious to trot out the "who watches the watchers" tag. More like geekily obvious.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It seems to me that SGAE is the victim here. They were the ones from whom money was embezzled. The perps are the senior officials within that organization.
Moral of the story: if you want to embezzle, be affiliated with people in power.
Just be sure that you don't embezzle from people who are affiliated with more powerful people than those you are affiliated with...or that your embezzlement raises a significant risk of reducing the power of the people you are affiliated with.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Argentinian "SADAIC" does the same. They appear in parties, weddings, ANYWHERE, and check if fees had been paid. And if you don't settle with them $$$ immediatelly, they call the police to have the meeting shut down. And some artists defend them with all their heart, cause they're SURE they're not getting robbed by SADAIC. Brainwashed. Also, the other day, SADAIC got offended because someone was angry at them about a thing happening here called "taxes to storage-enabled devices, cause they can be used for piracy".... they got to KNOW who that someone was, and they called the company that employees him (an argentinian inter media isp) to have him shut up. Pathetic.
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
Ladrones
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
They'll just get a contractor to install one for an inflated fee and kickbacks.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?