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Universal Music Demands Insurer Pay For Infringement Damages
An anonymous reader writes with a new twist in the recently resolved Canadian music label infringement lawsuit. From the article: "Earlier this year, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording
Industry Association (now Music Canada) — Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG
Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada — settled
the largest copyright
class action lawsuit
in Canadian history by agreeing to pay over $50 million to compensate
for hundreds of thousands of infringing uses of sound recordings. While
the record labels did not admit liability, the massive settlement spoke
for itself. While the Canadian case has now settled, Universal Music
has filed
its
own lawsuit, this time against its insurer, who it expects to pay
the
costs of the settlement."
...that the law to disconnect copyright infringers from the internet would have gone through.
God damn if they actually get away with this. It's already ridiculous how corporations can do all kinds of crap and only gets a slap on the wrist, but imagine if you went around infringing so many sound recordings that you'd net a $50 million fine, would your insurer be willing to pay that? I sure hope that they don't get away with this, would be fun watching the squirming with the bill.
Universal's insurer agreed to indemnify against copyright cases, and this was a copyright case. I suppose Universal should perhaps have checked that they would have been covered before agreeing to settle the case, but other than that the only out clause I can see for the insurer is that they didn't technically "lose" the case - they agreed to a settlement without admission of guilt.
Still, it boils down to media company vs. insurance company vs. lawyers, and I think it's pretty obvious the only winner out of that triumvirate is going to be lawyers. Oh well, I guess two out of three will just have to do.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
$50 million to compensate for hundreds of thousands of infringing uses of sound recordings.
$50 million is only like 2 or 3 pirated mp3's here in the states.
Required reading for internet skeptics
The first link (2011 Jan. 11) says it was $47.5 million and that they had set aside $50 million to resolve it in case it ever went to court. (Perhaps that was not reserve funds as we were led to believe but instead the size of the insurance policy?)
The second link (2011 May 31) rounds that up to a $50 million settlement. (Meh, what's another $2.50 million?)
How did it get to be "over $50 million"? Contempt citing/accrued interest/late fees for taking so long to pay out, or just bad reporting not clarifying whether it was in Canadian dollars or the reporter had converted it to US dollars?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
My car insurance has a lot of provisions like "... void if vehicle is driven under the influence ...", "... void if vehicle is used in criminal activities ..." (i.e. smashing while being chased by the police gives no relief).
I would assume most insurances have exclusions if a crime has been involved. Copyright violation is theft, right?
There were 300,000 infringing works and the statutory damages were 20,000. That's 6 billion bucks.
50 million is chump change. The music industry is willing to take people's retirement savings, ruining their lives, but they get only a slap on the wrist.
I always have heard that CEO's and other directors gets higher pay because they do job of many
Nope, they get higher pay because their actions make more of a difference to the overall profitability of a company. Look at what Carly Fiorina did to HP or Steve Jobs did to Apple to see how much of a difference a CEO can make in either direction. The difference between a good engineer and a bad engineer is a lot less to a typical company's bottom line. The problem is that Carly got paid over $20m for almost destroying the company, so the incentives are completely wrong. Do a bad job and you make a lot of money, do a good job and you make a crazy amount of money.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It seems to me some interpretation of the Hammer Clause probably applies here. Basically, if an Insured makes a settlement without the consent of the Insurer, then the Insurer is only on the hook for the amount that THEY WOULD HAVE AGREED TO SETTLE FOR. This is usually used to discourage a company from fighting a case on principle and losing more than they would have by settling. In this case, it would seem that the CRIA members might have paid LESS if they had gone to trial -- but in any event, if the Insurer did not authorize the settlement, then they aren't going to pony up for it above and beyond what they would willingly have settled for, nor will they pay for legal fees beyond the point at which they would have settled. The law probably is different in Canada, as I know it varies in other significant aspects from U.S. law. (For example, the law says policies sold to the public must be written in plain English/French and not legalese -- or at least the legalese has to be explained in plain language, and in the case of a conflict, the plain language prevails.)
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Any idea where I can get some "bank robbery" insurance? I have this fool-proof plan for making millions in minutes, if I could only get around that "going to jail for decades" bit...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I realize that you're being rhetorical, so my reply is not directed at you, per se.
If you feel guilty when you copy some media, you've been brainwashed. Copyright law (as it stands) is immoral, and supporting or upholding copyright law is immoral.
If you want to be cynical, CEO's and directors get higher pay because they hold the purse strings. It is pretty rare to see a CEO who's a visionary leader and single-handedly drives a company to fame and fortune. It is nearly always a team effort, even when you *do* have visionary leadership. The CEO and board merely get to claim credit for all successes (and "trim the fat", blame the market, etc. for failures).
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Actually if you did this you'd get a trillion dollar fine. This is a $200 payment for each song they infringed. Not per copy, per song. They sold them over and over and over and over. They paid a microscopic fraction of the profit they made by selling songs they did not have rights to.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
No, if the market doesn't want it, then you starve - no immorality.
But if people are pirating it, then pretty much demonstrably, people want your product. If they're willing to forego it for the price you charge, you also starve - no immorality.
But where they get the benefit of it *and* you don't get recompense you asked. *That's* immoral.
Not too far wrong. Jobs' salary was tiny, but he got a lot of share options. When Apple's value increased by 8,000%, Jobs made an enormous pile of money. If Apple's value had gone down, he'd have made $1/year (or lost money, depending on whether he exercised his options). Ideally, you'd pay your CEO something close to minimum wage (enough to live on, because you don't want only independently rich people to be qualified, but not enough to make them rich, or even particularly comfortably off), but then you'd link all of the rest of their income to the company's performance. Even more ideally, you'd set up their share options so that they couldn't sell the majority until five years after they left, so if they didn't choose a competent successor and leave the company in a long-term manageable state they'd lose too. With share options set up the way they currently are, it's typically a good strategy for a CEO to make massive cuts to R&D, wait for the share price to increase as the short-term profits double from not investing anything in growth, and then quit the company, sell the shares, and find another company to break.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I do understand the way you feel, and it is a valid objection, but just for argument's sake, imagine you see a beggar in the street, and you know he's homeless and hungry, and you want to help by giving him some money, but there's a big Maffia thug (obviously well fed, with a fancy car parked across the street) standing next to him and declaring that for every dollar you give to the bum, you have to give 20 dollars to the thug. Would you still give the money to the bum? Or would you walk away? Of course the beggar might say "but the thug is protecting me, he got me this spot, without him I wouldn't be able to beg here!". Still, I don't think many people would help the bum.
Now of course I do understand that this is the only way for many artists to get a living, and by not buying their music we are denying them their little bit of income, but that justification gets weaker and weaker the more you here about abuse by the labels. The thugs are even snatching the pennies away whenever the bums aren't looking. And they are denying them the right to do anything without them, treating them like slaves. And why should I pay for a ringtone, for example? In that case, the artist isn't getting anything whatsoever, thanks to some lawsuit the greedy labels won! This sort of bull shit takes away 90% of the motivation from people who might turn from piracy to decent buying.
Yes, there's still a little bit of a feeling left of "doing the decent thing", and "supporting the artists", but not as much as there could be if the labels were honest.
Would a long time pirate want to legalize his music collection by paying $1000 to the artists once he got well off financially? Maybe, seriously. Would he pay $10 to the artists and $990 to the labels? After reading one of many articles about the labels ripping off the artists? No way.
Now of course I do understand that this is the only way for many artists to get a living, and by not buying their music we are denying them their little bit of income
Why do people keep throwing this argument into the air?!?!?! NO! No they are not getting their living from that. They are not even REMOTELY getting a living from that.
CONCERTS! LIVE SHOWS! THAT'S where they get money. They do not get money from the labels (ignoring the handful of pennies mentioned above, which is a microscopic fraction of what they make playing live).
You can't make one song and then live off of it forever, just like I can't build someone's house and keep getting paid by them for as long as they live there. Life doesn't work that way. Why do people keep thinking artists have a free pass to infinite money after making a song?
Coincidentally, tonight I will be seeing a band live. I paid for the ticket, and I plan to buy a shirt. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of people, almost every day for as long as their tour is. THAT is how they can feed and clothe themselves.
No, what's immoral is the life+70 years monopoly before it enters the public domain, DMCA, and many other faults of copyright law. The ludicrously long term hinders creativity. The DMCA makes backing up data you've paid good money for illegal.
Keeping what I've already paid for away from me is immoral. Taking what belongs to we, the people (art and literature) is immoral. Copyright law is in terrible need of reform. Power needs to be taken form the entertainment companies and given to the people who actually create the art and literature.
How is that life+75 years going to entice Jimi Hendrix of Janice Joplin to produce more works? It doesn't. It's a disincentive to the record companies to record someone new; they can still make money off the old. Make the term 20 years and an artist won't be able to retire on the revenues of a single work.
Free Martian Whores!
This is exactly the system I've talked about for years. Too many directors care only about pumping up the short term profitability or share prices of a company so they can make it look like they're doing a fantastic job, leave with a golden handshake and watch the company meltdown from a safe distance a few years later. There is absolutely no incentive at the moment to ensure the long term health of a company. It's exactly the same situation with governments - pretty much every political part in government cares more about being re-elected than ensuring the long term health of the country, that's why we often see big tax cut incentives right before an election even if it's not in the country's interest, because who wants to be the government to put taxes up and help your opponents to get elected with a healthy public chest? The incentives for business and politics are all wrong and that's why the world is in such a huge financial mess.
Only if we the public do it.
Outside of replacing your "No, what's" with "It is", I'd agree with your most of your post.
Heck, I'd even say that pirating a work that where the creator has been dead for a decade is not terribly immoral.
But then we both know that's not what's being pirated, don't we?
In other words, problems with copyright law are being used as a moral smoke-screen to justify pirating what artists produced last month or year and companies are still spending millions making available to the public.
I've realized that sadly the world doesn't beat a path to the door of the better mousetrap builder.
The mousetrap fallacy is a very popular one. However --
the sad truth is that they're vital to the industry and always will be.
Sorry, that's a fallacy as well. Thirty (or even fewer) years ago it was in fact true -- the costs of recording and marketing an album was prohibitive for the average person, but these days the most expensive part of making an album is the musical instruments and amps; studio time is dirt cheap. Duplication is dirt cheap. And there's the internet for it to be heard. What use are the record labels to anyone these days? Their purpose for existance is obsolete.
And in my opinion, culture would be far better off without the likes of Britney Spears or NSync. I hear far better, more original music played by far better musicians in the local bars. Musicians are a dime a dozen, songs should be as well.
Free Martian Whores!
> . If Apple's value had gone down, he'd have made $1/year
That would be nice, but not how options generally work for CEO's, they are generally written below the stock price at issue, and then they are usually re-priced to still pay off if the stock price goes down. By paying in this way, as long as you only exercise the options over a year old, then most of the risk free gains will then be at capital gains rates...