Anti-piracy Group Fined For Using Song Without Permission

zacharye writes "Oh, the irony. A musicians' rights group in the Netherlands was fined this week for stealing music from a client, using it without his permission and failing to pay royalties. Music royalty collection agency Buma/Stemra approached Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt in 2006 and asked him to create a composition that would be used in an anti-piracy advertisement, which the group said would be shown exclusively at a local film festival. One year later, Rietveldt purchased a Harry Potter DVD only to find that his piece was being used on DVDs around the world without his permission..."

Comments

Re:Another case of "do what i say, and not what I

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Perhaps its time that we realize that intellectual property is not in the best interests of society

Eh... I cannot say I agree with you. I mean if the IP system was being used properly, the composer would be getting paid for the use of his work.

That said, would totally agree that cases like this prove that people are abusing it. I mean, if you're going to hoot and holler over people using your content without permission, you should be the last person to do the same. This example doesn't really exlcaim "IP is bad for everybody!"

Re:Another case of "do what i say, and not what I

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There is a second extra-classy angle in this story.

When the composer discovers his song has been used more widely than agreed, he goes to his music royalty collecting agency, an entity ostensibly representing those starving artists out of whose mouths pirates are stealing delicious crumbs.

They stonewall him. Hard.

Then, in a conversation that turned out to be recorded, causing a bit of a scandal, "The case caused a scandal in the Netherlands last year following discussions Rietveldt had with Buma/Stemra[the collecting agency] board member Jochem Gerrits about getting the money he was owed. In order to help, Gerrits suggested that the composer should sign his track over to High Fashion Music, a label owned by Gerrits himself and one that would take 33% of Rietveldt’s royalties for its trouble."

So, yeah, if he was merely willing to play ball with the label owned by a board member of the collecting agency, his little problem could be made to go away, for a modest price. If he preferred not to sign, well, perhaps he might continue to have trouble?

This isn't exactly news; but the de-facto Intellectual 'Property' system appears to operate on the basis that peasants might have the right to sell their little scraps of it; but only people who matter are accorded any serious protection.