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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).
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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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.
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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.
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.