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Sony Accused of Pirating Music In "The Interview"

Posted by timothy on from the such-a-loaded-term dept.

the simurgh writes As the controversy surrounding Sony's handling of its hack, the movie The Interview and its aftermath continues, a singer is claiming that after failing to reach terms with Sony, the company put her music in the movie anyway. Yoon Mi-rae (real name Natasha Shanta Reid) is a U.S.-born hip hop and R&B singer who currently releases music on the Feel Ghood Music label. Sshe and her label claim that her track we learned that the track 'Pay Day' has been used without permission, legal procedure, or contracts.

7 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, once again, if we do this we get crushed under the heel of a team of lawyers.

    But a multinational like Sony does it and I bet they'll just dicker and claim some bullshit like fair use they routinely deny exists.

    I sincerely hope Sony has to pay a massive fine for this ... something on par with what we'd get beat down with.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If we do it, Sony is one of the companies who helped pay for the law which says you and I would have to pay massive amounts of statutory damages, with additional punitive damages for having done it on purpose.

      I want Sony to receive the same magnitude of punishment as they would insist we receive.

      Because I really despise multinationals when they argue both sides of the same legal argument as it benefits them.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Hmmm ... by Free+Censorship · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Eh? If we do it, people say that no one loses anything if you make a copy, and that sharing has been part of human culture for ages.

      No, normal people with brains say that. The legal system and companies like Sony do not feel the same way. Don't confuse the two.

      These people should have nothing to whine about if Sony then goes to do the same thing.

      I agree that people who say that copying such data harms none shouldn't care if Sony does it (and some do, making them hypocrites).

      But the thing is, it's about Sony being absolute hypocrites, and equality under the law.

    3. Re:Hmmm ... by ChromaticDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Rightly or wrongly, and setting legal issues aside for the moment, the general populations around the world seem quite able to draw a rather clear distinction between the two cases you'e seemed to conflate.

      If I partake of the "sharing" of song by listening to it this is one thing. Folk merge together the acts of listening to it on the radio, listening to it via Internet radio, listening to it by downloading and using favorite player, downloading it and putting it onto favorite device and listening to it, etc., etc. You can argue all day long about lost sales, but by and large those arguments are unpersuasive.

      However, if I copy the song in any way and then sell it in any way, people see this differently. I'm selling something that isn't mine to sell. Sure, people may love to buy pirated DVDs on the streets at a tenth of the price. But far fewer people would rise to defend the black marketeers here.

      Sony execs listening to these songs in their office wouldn't bother most. But clearly and unambiguously using material in the production of a movie without permission of the artist is a different matter. It is indeed hypocritical of Sony to champion copyright issues while blantantly violating such concerns.

    4. Re:Hmmm ... by msauve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Copying a work is often called theft, and it is not - it is copying, and nothing of substance has been taken.

      I think most people agree that some limited form of protection for creative works is a fair trade for encouraging the creation of works which will eventually become public domain. But there is no natural right to "own" a thought, and "intellectual property" laws are merely a privilege which society grants in exchange for value.

      But, the extension of copyright terms prevents works from entering the public domain, making that exchange a fraud. I will submit that creative works made for profit are based on ROIs measured in years, not decades. There is no legitimate need for, or public good which comes from "author's life plus 70 years," or 95 years after publication.

      Why should MS-DOS still be under copyright? Lotus 1-2-3? SVR4? When they enter public domain, they will be useless. They are substantially so already, now add another 60 years (presuming no further term extensions). So, the tradeoff has already failed - the public will receive nothing of value in exchange for giving copyright protection for a time.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  2. File a take-down notice by paulproteus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    YouTube has a standard DMCA complaints procedure. I recommend that Yoon Mi-rae and the label follow that process, partly because it actually works which is great in this case, and partly to give Sony a taste of their own medicine.

    Here is the link: https://support.google.com/you...

    (Note that I have a bunch of experience with the take-down process, including participating in an EFF lawsuit ~10 years ago; see https://www.eff.org/document/d... .)

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    |/usr/games/fortune
  3. Re:Sauce for the goose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    grasping that both have not much to do with each other

    Actually, this is rather difficult to grasp, since DMCA stands for "Digital Millennium Copyright Act.".

    And also since " In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet." (source)

    And also since the DMCA is used to smack the masses down when they share copyrighted material.

    Though, ultimately, you are right. Wealthy international corporations are not beholden to many laws to which the masses are subjugate, and this is a textbook example.