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IFPI Won't Share Pirate Bay Damages With Musicians
An anonymous reader tips this news from TorrentFreak:
Earlier this year the sentences against the Pirate Bay defendants were made final. Aside from prison sentences, they will have to pay damages to the entertainment industries, including €550,000 to several major music labels. The court awarded the damages to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses. However, it now turns out that artists won’t see a penny of the money, as the labels have allocated it to IFPI to fund new anti-piracy campaigns. ...While it may come as no surprise that the music industry has a hard time getting money from The Pirate Bay defendants, what comes next may raise a few eyebrows. 'There is an agreement that any recovered funds will be paid to IFPI Sweden and IFPI London for use in future anti-piracy activities,' IFPI writes. In other words, the money that the Court awarded to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses is not going to the artists at all."
This certainly comes as a huge surprise...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That's all. .)
They operate like organized crime. (In regional cells and a strict hierarchy ruled by having connections
They harass people like organized crime. (Mostly protection rackets.)
They defraud and steal from people like organized crime. (Getting creative works from others, then asking lots of money for every worthless copy, without moving even a single finger.)
They take drugs like organized crime. (I had a colleague who had to do all the deals with that industry for our company. Often there was no way of even making a deal without at least consuming cocaine and ordering some hookers. [I wish I was just making that up.])
They would shoot and torture people like organized crime, if they weren't openly in the spotlight and could get away with it.
They are organized crime.
So we must treat them like organized crime.
It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
I'd feel a modicum of sympathy for these musicians if they understood that the record companies have never cared about their careers, just about how much money they could wring out of them before disposing of them and moving on to the next disposable musicians, but they don't.
They naively believed that they're all on the same side and the reality is that they've never been and never will be.
This has been well known from the start. For the RIAA/MPAA/etc, the recording artists are *resources*. Like lumber, or oil, or minerals. Just something to be mined and discarded when it's of no further value. You don't see mining companies making sure their mines are well taken care of, do you? Or taking the profits from the sale of the minerals and pouring the money into old, abandoned mine shafts?
Of course not. Artists are resources to be consumed.
Suing copyright infringers is really just fucked. It's like if I, as a citizen, started sending letters to people for jay-walking; I'd sue them in civil court for $5,000 (with photograph evidence obtained legally), or I'd settle for $50. Just sign the papers, fill in your bank details, then we'll deduct the money from your account.
Is that legal? In this specific example, probably not, unless I *owned* the street. Let's say for a moment that I do.
Is it immoral? I'd consider it immoral.
I publish all my books DRM free and I don't give two fucking shits if people download them illegally. Every time one of these fucking "sue the piraters FOR THE ARTISTS", I always say... "Where's my share?" I own the rights to books. I publish them electronically. They get "pirated". Why shouldn't I get free money for it?
Well?
Well?
The real reason is, obviously, the MPAA/RIAA are cunts and the idea that they're doing this for the artists in any way is completely retarded.
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It's the musicians who sign up to these labels. They're the ones doing work for them. They're the ones who could cause the labels to shrivel and die simply by choosing or building alternative distribution methods.
Worst of all are the half a dozen successes who pretend that these scrounging middlemen act on musicians' behalf, with superstar whores acting no better than the celebrity representatives of Scientology from Bee Gees to Metallica to Lily Allen (only joking, Lily - you're no superstar, you're shit).
"we call it Riding the Gravy Train."
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Doesn't surprise me one bit. Here in Belgium you have Sabam which also collects money from different sources but "fails" to get the money to the artist. If I remember correctly last year artists where waiting for about 200 million of euro's and that in Belgium alone. You know how much interests they get on such sums ? And those interests don't get into the pockets of the artists.
They are also masters of getting money out of peoples pocket. When a slick Sabam inspector arrives, you know it will cost you money and they go through some stupid lengths to justify the "extra's" you need to pay.
A flemish satirical program Basta! went even that far to organize a concert with a jar of vegatables (from the brand Suzy Wan), a mixer from Kenwood and another thing that I can't recall. And Sabam slapped them with an invoice for those "artists". So they went with the jar of vegetables and the mixer to the Sabam HQ so the "artists" could sign up to get their money.
Sabam was not amused en when the Basta! guys where planning to give concert with those 'artists', they called the police.
Sabam was even under investigation that they falsified the accounts so they could put money away to bribe officials. But even after all the shenanigans those organisation can still operate. And it isn't that the general public doesn't hate them, they loathe them with a passion.
That is using the failed logic that a pirated copy is a lost sale. Also if all funds received from courts for piracy go into fighting it more the artists will never get any of it as it will be a continuous loop.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
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FLAC Audio and DRM-Free, not a penny to the leeches! And if you think that the bands are too hippy, you can choose to send all of your money to the EFF who actively fight said leeches.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
From TFA:
In other words, the money that the Court awarded to compensate artists and rightsholders for their losses is not going to the artists at all.
This is not a logical conclusion. If anti-piracy activities increase future sales by detering illegal copying, the artists will (proportionately) benefit just as much as the labels.
You do realize that "money that the Court awarded" and "increase future sales" are not the same? One is actual cash, and the other is wishful thinking. So, logically, your second sentence is a non sequitur.
The court explicitly declared that the money should go to the artists. If the artists decide it should be used for that, fine, but it should be going to the artists first. If they decide to give it to someone else for some other purpose, whatever, but not giving it to the artists is violating a direct court decision.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
But you kind of hit on the reason why this problem is the fundamental problem, but also why getting musicians to act can't possibly be the solution.
That reason is that people like Lily Allen only succeded in the industry because her dad got her there due to his contacts. The fact is the music industry is absolutely full of acts who just wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the industry to turn them into a product. These artists wont leave the industry because it's the only way they can make a living doing what they love - they sure as hell couldn't go it alone because without the music industry's cartel operation to prop them up they wouldn't stand a chance in a free market where they're competing based on talent.
The industry keeps these people employed as "artists" whilst keeping any uncontrolled real talent that hasn't signed up out. It's a protection racket, unless you sign up you've got no hope, and half those who have signed up signed up because they had no hope otherwise anyway due to them having a severe lack of talent compared to everyone else.
There's just trash after trash after trash - Nikki Minaj seems to be the latest abysmal excuse for an artist that's being thrust repeatedly on the radio here in the UK right now. A few good artists make it through, like Rihanna does actually seem to have some talent, for example, but even they get used as tools to prop up the shite - case in point, I don't know what song it is because I don't care but there was a song on the radio a few weeks back which involved some fairly decent singing from Rihanna and then you get that silly Minaj bitch come on to just completely destroy the track. Had she not had Rihanna to prop up the song most sane people would just completely and utterly ignore the track. Christ, I don't even like this type of music, but again, because of the cartel, there's really little choice to listen to anything else during my commute as it's all the radio stations play in the UK.
Instead, the government kept all of that money justifying that they would/might someday provide Medicare for those people -- despite the fact that most did not receive Medicare benefits! The State governments even announced that they were using the funds to build roads and for other projects!
This is one more demonstration that these types of groups seek to champion causes in order to perpetuate themselves, by keeping up the fight (fear), rather than relaying recovered damages back to those who were harmed. It's disgraceful.
This is exactly why I don't buy music from stores. The only discs I have were bought directly from the artist after a live concert. Doing so, I believe I am sponsoring the artist directly because the discs they sell after stage, despite still being produced by their record label, do not contain distribution and retail fees. The disc price might even be higher but that way I really believe I'm sponsoring the artist and not the mafia.
As a side benefit, all of my discs are signed by their respective artists ; )
That's because you become part of the piracy statistic, as they don't consider the fact that people just aren't buying their music. Every unsold album, in their eyes, was an album that was downloaded, and is thus used by them as further justification for their heavy-handed tactics.
FC Closer
According to this model they would use the money to sue more people in order to get even more money from the state they could use to sue... Anything else would be against the market's principles.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!