I got a good laugh out of this bit of precious irony. An anti-piracy group has been fined for not paying the composer of a piece of music for the use of that music in commercial videos (it had been composed for a single non-commercial anti-piracy video).
In 2006, Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt was asked to compose a piece of music to be used in an anti-piracy advert. It was to be used exclusively at a local film festival.
However, when Rietveldt bought a Harry Potter DVD in 2007, he discovered his music being used in the anti-piracy ad without his permission. In fact, it had been used on dozens of DVDs both in the Netherlands and overseas.
In order to get the money he was owed, Rietveldt went to local music royalty collecting agency Buma/Stemra who had been representing him since 1988 but had failed to pay him any money for the anti-piracy piece previously registered with them.
Eventually Stemra sent Rietveldt an advance of 15,000 euros along with a promise to forward a list of all the other DVDs that the composer’s music had been used on. That list never arrived, but according to the Amsterdam Court this week it amounted to at least 71 commercial DVDs…
“This dispute lingered on for some years, but in 2012 Stemra arranged a settlement with BREIN legal parent NVPI for the unpaid royalties,” Arnoud Engelfriet, a lawyer specializing in Internet law at the ICTRecht law firm, told TorrentFreak.
“Under the settlement Stemra would receive 60,000 euros. Rietveldt sued because he had calculated he was due at least 164,974 euros.”
In June, Stemra paid Rietveld another 31,000 euros but this week the Amsterdam District Court ruled that Stemra had indeed been negligent in their handling of the case. They were fined 20,000 euros, ordered to pay Rietveldt’s legal costs, and told to continue efforts to pay all money due to the composer while keeping him fully informed of developments.
8 comments
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cthulhusminion
July 22, 2012 at 10:45 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
IIRC the head of the royalty agency tried to get the artist to sign over rights to the song to his label to “help” with royalty collection.
Draken
July 22, 2012 at 12:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As far as I know, artists in the Netherlands have to pay a fee to BUMA/Stemra even if they’ve decided to distribute their music for free. It’s also quite disfunctional as far as paying artists is concerned, according to some musicians.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
July 22, 2012 at 12:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Could there be a more perfect illustration of the utter fraudulence of the MAFIAA’s pretenses of supporting the rights of artists and creators?
chriswalker
July 22, 2012 at 2:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Uh, yeah. Such as a case exactly like this involving the RIAA or MPAA.
leper
July 22, 2012 at 10:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not quite in the US, but Canada’s recording industry was recently caught doing similar things and ended up settling to pay the musicians what they were owed.
pounce
July 23, 2012 at 9:11 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Artists not getting paid for their work is always the issue.
I understand that articles like this appear to validate the idea that the anyone or any group who seeks to assure that the creative class actually doesn’t get constantly looted is portrayed in a bad light. This happens non stop and is unfortunate.
A better understanding of the financial implications of piracy can be found here –
http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/letter-to-emily-white-at-npr-all-songs-considered/
I’m in the creative community and fully understand what piracy has done to my industry and a few others. I think one of the top issues moving forward is whether real protection for anyone in the creative class will exist in the digital age – whether they create software, music, games, movies, news, or whatnot. Anything digital is being looted wholesale and with little ability for artists to prevent themselves from having their works taken, worldwide, in massive amounts. Any efforts by groups like the RIAA are met with great resistance, and while they are the policing arm for such activities I had always hoped there would be a more honest nod to the fact that taking stuff without paying for it is a problem. We are going to see less quality in digital works because the best and most expensive stuff to create isn’t supported by patronage anymore.
Anyway, I’ll stop myself here on this issue (adding that I’ve heard every justification for piracy already, and every incorrect assessment of how the music business ought to get paid according to people not in that industry at all. No need to rehash that). I just expect a smarter discourse here and the immediate gratification in portraying anyone on the side of content creator rights as the bad guy is an unfortunate position to take.
Bronze Dog
July 23, 2012 at 11:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m all for creators’ rights to earn money. I’m mostly amused by hypocrisy of anti-piracy groups when something like this happens because I don’t see them as being sincere about opposing piracy, but rather as prone to defending outdated marketing practices and afraid of their big label clients losing ground to indie creators.
zmidponk
July 23, 2012 at 2:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
pounce #6:
The main problem, I think, is that, whilst piracy has undoubtedly had a negative effect on creative industries, those negative effects are routinely exaggerated, sometimes in an embarrassingly obvious fashion, by the most well-known groups primarily concerned with enforcing and protecting copyright, namely the RIAA and MPAA. In addition, they don’t really seem in any way concerned with coming to an acceptable compromise between protecting copyrights and protecting other rights, which is why they so heavily backed and supported SOPA and PIPA, even going so far as to call the internet blackouts in protest at those bills ‘abuse of power’ and ‘a dangerous gimmick’, instead of recognising the unprecedented widespread protest at these bills and thinking that maybe the reason for it was that there were legitimate problems with the bills. This means that these groups are widely perceived to be dishonest and just as bad, if not worse than the pirates, and the pirates, at least, aren’t trying to pass laws to give legal backing to their actions, at the expense of other peoples rights, whereas the MPAA and RIAA are, and this negative image has rubbed off on the whole idea of ‘protecting copyright’.