Says govt has been “negligent,” demands compensation for years of “massive free downloading,” as well as immediate “effective measures… to protect the rights and interests of the record industry.”
A number of Spanish indie record labels seem to be suffering from a serious case of delusion, blaming everybody but itself for the music industry’s woes.
For a group of them have decided to focus their legal sights on the govt itself for failing to properly protect it from illegal file-sharing.
They accuse it of “negligence” and demand compensation for the years of “massive free downloading” that they’ve had to endure.
Judges in Spain have ruled on numerous occasions that individual file-sharing is legal so long as there is “no talk of money or any other compensation beyond the sharing of material available among various users,” so this past January the govt tried a different approach by targeting the operators of sites that facilitate copyright infringement.
The govt has replied to the suit by pointing to that new legislation as an example of its efforts to fight online piracy, but the record labels rightly know the law will have little effect on the problem.
“The proposal is insufficient – they could close a Web site one day, and 500 new ones could open the next day in the Ukraine, for example,” says Gerardo Carton, a spokesman for labels involved. “The measure would not resolve the most relevant problem, which is the actual impossibility of us taking civil action against those final users who appropriate music without paying, and systematically violate intellectual property rights.”
Eureka. That’s precisely why the record labels have to focus on giving the consumer what they want, where, and how they want it. The sooner they realize that the better, but sadly we all know they never will.
“We think the Administration is responsible for our plight,” adds Carton, as though the govt was to blame for the industry’s mismanagement. “We demand that the government take effective measures imminently to protect the rights and interests of the record industry, as well as the intellectual property rights of the agents that intervene in the creative musical process within Internet.”
This is where it gets really sad. The record labels are basically asking the govt to figure out a way to presumably filter and “manage” the Internet to ensure that it is able to earn every euro it feels owed.
There are no “effective measures” when it comes to fighting online piracy short of draconian steps like DPI. Is that what the record labels are asking for? It’s pretty frightening to think that groups – especially indie groups – who are so dependent on a culture of free thought and expression to create music in the first place would demand that everybody else surrender those very same rights simply so that it can more from them.
It’s an odd juxtaposition, and summarizes just why the public is growing so weary with record labels and they’re increasingly irrational excuses for their actions.
Stay tuned.
[Hat Tip]
Stay tuned.
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Spanish music is fun. But they have a small market. Go international! Don’t blame non-buyers!
yeah down with censorship i use http://www.emule-project.net to dl
great p2p program