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

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

[starworks5]

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

Just goes to show

[detain]

the music industries attack on piracy is often about a new way to extort easy money more than an actual concern for the musicians they are supposed to represent

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

[BitHive]

Thank you, the record will benefit immensely from your important ideas about law and government.

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!"

This doesn't surprise me at all.

[wierd_w]

Its real simple to understand these asshats. They hold the following constellation of views:

1) if we have licensed it, it's ours.
2) if we comission it, it's ours.
3) if one of our signed artists makes it, it's ours.
--
4) if it's ours, we can do whatever we damned well want with it.
5) if somebody is violating their limited license for something that is ours, we will squash them.

The conflict between "You were given limited rights. You may not redistribute however you like!" And their internal rose-colored view of how copyright should work never crosses their mind. They operate under the blanket policy that anything they license, comission, or sponsor is their full, exclusive right. That's why they make stupid blunders like this, time and time again.

It's also why they get cranky like a baby with diaper rash when they can't get full, exclusive rights to properties. Their business model revolves around having exclusive power, and dolling out highly nonexclusive licenses.

To defeat them, we need to cut off their supply of exclusives. Nothing short of oxygen deprivation will kill them. Like ants though, they have quite a bit of bottled air, and will take decades to kill off.

Big media was a bad idea for everyone involved except government, middlemen, and lawyers.

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

[wonkey_monkey]

We all stand on the shoulders of giants ;-)

Not me. I stand on a stack of midgets.

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.

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

[cpu6502]

>>>This example doesn't really exlcaim "IP is bad for everybody!"

Yeah it does. It shows how the law is used for the benefit of the rich, not the people it supposedly protects. WE steal money, we get punished. MF's Jon Corzine steals money, he gets called "the honorable" in Congress and that's about it. RIAA/MPAA get caught pirating songs and selling them to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars, but nothing happens. WE do that and we get hit with multimillion dollar fines that make us lifelong wage slaves (see Jamie Thomas).

Ultimately We the People would be better off without these laws, since they don't benefit us. They only benefit the fucking rich (corporations/CEOs) and/or the well-connected (politicians and polticians' friends).

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

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

The composer should have been paid for the of work he performed, as the function of the investment it takes to perform the work and value, not for how useful the work ended up being.

Why? His unique contribution helped bring in a good deal of money, so much so that they enter into agreements that basically equate to profit sharing. Your approach would just mean the big nasty corp gets all the dollars.

Likewise I have a hard time developing devices without running afoul of someone's patent...

This really is a different topic from patents and, as such, a separate discussion. I would like to point out, though, that it's implied that the people you're accusing of sitting fat and lazy off your work did that work before you got to it. You're being encouraged to either license their work or try another approach. That means rewarding the inventor who sunk the time into it (like you do for a living) or developing the technology even further by trying other approaches. That actually is how the patent system is supposed to work and I'm willing to bet that's helping the company you work for out. Getting back on topic, if your complaint about their patent is that it's overly broad, then we're back to the problem not being with the system, but how its enforced. That is a legitimate complaint, but it takes a different approach to get something done about it.