Anti-piracy group BREIN caught ripping off music

Inquisitr ^ | 12/2/11 | Steven Hodson

[LibWhacker]

Oh let the laughter ensue raucously on this one folks.

Seriously how ridiculously stupid do you have to be to not only steal music from the very people you are suppose to be representing, and protecting, but then to get caught doing it.

It all started back in 2006 when Dutch performer Melchior Rietveldt was approached by the anti-piracy group BREIN to write a score for an anti-piracy video which he was led to believe would only be shown a a local arts festival.

Well it turns out that his music found its way on a large number of retail DVD’s as the background music for the anti-piracy lead in to the movie. Rietveldt only discovered this because he heard it playing on the Harry Potter DVD he was watching. Now according to some numbers being floated around his music could very well have ended up onto tens of millions of discs.

It was Rietveldt’s financial advisory who informed him that had he been properly paid for the additional use of his work he would have seen a payday of around one million Euros.

Now this is where insult gets added onto injury because when Rietveldt tried to contact the local group responsible for collecting these types of royalties he was ignored. It wasn’t until he was contacted by the local BREIN representative Jochem Gerrits with a proposition. or rather what amounted to a shakedown.

You see Gerrits, who also owns a record label, offered to intercede on Rietveldt’s behalf to get his money if Rietveldt agreed to pay Gerrits 33% of whatever was retrieved. Apparently the reasoning behind this arrangement as Gerrits told Rietveldt’s financial advisor was that without his help Rietveldt wouldn’t see a dime so he deserved a cut for his help.

And the music industry wonders why people don’t trust them further than they can spit in a headwind.

[allmost]

Big names can take it. It can even add to the bottom line. The little guys are screwed. Musicians are generally ripe.

[J Aguilar]

In the line of what happened in Spain with the SGAE, the society endowed by the Socialist government with the task of managing the copyrights of authors and writters:

The SGAE scandal continues to dominate the front pages in Spain.

El Mundo reveals that the Ministry for Industry gave 3.6 million € to the SGAE and its ‘parasite’ company. The company shows a photo of top singer, Victor Manuel, who says he still thinks there is a ‘black hand’ behind the scandal. The paper says that Minister for Culture Sinde was warned 18 months ago about the diversion of funds from the SGAE...

[allmost]

That article jumps around a bit from topic to topic. Europe is interesting because our politicians tend to take all of their bad ideas (start in California) and implement them here. Do you have a better dedicated article handy that is relevant to this specific topic?

[J Aguilar]

Well, El País newspaper, although pro-Socialist, offers a good summary here:

SGAE-high expense accounts as ex-pop star is linked to scandal

Further news here:

Copyright organization chief faces 10 years in jail for diverting funds

In a few words, although many artists do not belong to that organization, the SGAE self-proclaimed itself as the collector of copyright fees (private copying has always been legal in Spain as long as the price of the machine that makes the copy includes a fee). The Socialist government has endorsed that, and further give them subsidies and expanded the fees to CD's and DVD's first, and finally, when Spaniards began to buy them in Portugal or Andorra at half price, to hard drives, mobile phones, mp3 players, etc.

Further, SGAE hit men have harassed business and even private citizens, just like a mafia, even for works whose authors they do not represent. A few have sued it, and finally got sentences against the SGAE (a fee on a DVD used to backup a company's files is illegal, hence leaving the whole scheme illegal). Internet user associations have also hardly opposed them in an organized way that it was not known in Spain.

The sentences against the SGAE, even by the European court in Strasburg, the deep and organized opposition from internet users and the fact that the vast amount of money collected from the sale of electronic devices in a 45 million people economy was not reaching the authors, finally made the Socialist government try to recover some votes prosecuting the SGAE top managers.

In the end, I am sure part of that money help funding the Socialist party. That will be a big problem for the defence attorneys of the SGAE top members.

Easy come, easy go.

[allmost]

In the end, I am sure part of that money help funding the Socialist party. That will be a big problem for the defence attorneys of the SGAE top members.

Leftists cannot create. They take. %99.9 are leaches. There are a few ideologues to whom I say live and let live. Thanks for the links. It's good to have a little bit of advanced warning.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Personal downloading is one thing.
Commercial theft and exploitation is another.

[J Aguilar]

That’s it. They hate creators and surely having succesfully forged a so profitable scheme on the work of others, it will be tried in other countries.

By the way, I must correct: the European Court of Justice is in Luxembourg, not Strasbourg.