‘Wedding Crashing’ Royalty Collector Continues to Break the Law
Written by Ben Jones on December 25, 2008A Spanish performing rights organisation has already fallen foul of the courts for the way it has collected evidence in royalties disputes. Yet, despite being punished for breaking the law in the past, it is unrepentant and says it will continue to do business in that way.
The excessively zealous RIAA campaigns to get those it accuses of infringement are well known. Similar organizations exist in other countries and sometimes their actions are even worse. In this case, the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) has violated Spanish law, in an attempt to prove a royalties case.
The SGAE is the main collecting agency for performance royalties, which it then distributes to artists and copyright holders. Sometimes it goes that ‘extra mile’ to enforce these royalties, as it did in 2005.
The SGAE hired a private investigator to gatecrash a wedding reception in Seville and video it. The video was to be used as evidence that the venue was playing music without paying the fees SGAE felt it should. However, when the case came to trial, the judge threw out the video evidence as it was collected illegally, in violation of the privacy rights of the people at the event. Despite the loss of the taped evidence, the venue was fined €43,179 ($59,200 US) for using the music without paying royalties.
However, that story had a happy ending of sorts. The SGAE was later fined €60,101 ($82,400 US) for the violation of privacy. Excluding court costs, that’s a €16,992 loss for the SGAE, as well as the bad publicity it generated. Yet, in the world of copyright enforcement, if there is weight to be thrown around and fees to collect, it will be done. The head of the SGAE, Pedro Farre, is reported in The Times as saying “Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it.”
The agency was also critical over the ruling that his agency violated the wedding’s intimacy, saying in 2006 that any questions over the legality of the video were “demagogic arguments”, and that the issue should be that the venue was using music illegally, not the legality of the evidence.
Now, in 2008 another similar case is reaching the courts. This time, instead of having a private detective recording the wedding, a tape the SGAE says they obtained from a legitimate attendee will be presented as evidence. Again, at issue is the privacy of the wedding – there is a constitutional right in Spain to one’s own image – which might still invalidate the video. Those at the wedding, after all, have no impact over the venue’s decision regarding licensing, and it’s their right to privacy that the venue’s lawyer, JoaquÍn Moeckel, says is being violated in the case against the Salón de Bodas.
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11 Responses
Here in Spain, SGAE is also known as "Siempre Ganamos Algunos Euros", We always gain a few euros.
I guess Pedro Farre is buying his place in hell… well, in my opinion, it suits him! What an utterly disgusting way of getting some royalties paid… *yuck*
"the issue should be that the venue was using music illegally, not the legality of the evidence"
Yeah, let's just take that to its logical conclusion and beat the shit out of each suspected infringer until they confess. After all, how the evidence is obtained isn't important, it's all about whether they were using music illegally.
I heard about the first case a little while ago in Ars (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081218-cop...didnt know these morons were going to do it again.
Greedy bastards.
here we go again illegal music , you above whom claim such get a riaa life its at best an infringement and is not illegal it is a copy like in star trek how they have them things that make them food as hte yare copies of "recipes" this is no different and look at star trek how the world could be wihtout patents, copyrights and other stupidity
OH but no one will create things.
WRONG
opensource proves people wil create and think of the wonders when people that create know that there creation isn't for sale and WOULD immediately benefit everyone
this is what the riaa truly fights because as we move form the cold war there areno wars to fight, only democracy as they try and facistly take YOUR rights away
The industry is filled with idiots.
What the hell is there legal left to do with music anymore?
So what if they protect the rights of artist and copyright holders, they couldn't even care less about people's privacy. That's terrible…
These people should be taught the meaning of greed.
Anybody doing that at my gathering would face dire consequences.
This is the kinda crap people spend money on when there are criminals still raping and murdering, they are JUST AS BAD because they choose to harass innocent people.
What they are doing should be illegal, they should be jailed and have to face the criminals they should be catching.
See, copyright is inherently privacy-violating because copyright concerns the "ownership" of ideas or thoughts, which are not contained in any concrete object, but rather in ideas, which may even be embodied in objects which one does not own.
For example, it is the idea that one does not own the ideas or thoughts contained in a CD or in one's own mind, even though one owns the CD or one's own mind. Copyright is the "right" to "own" and thus control these ideas or thoughts even when it is contained in other people's CDs, or in other people's minds (such as, for example, memorizing a song and performing it, or memorizing a book and reciting it, &c). This, of course, fundamentally destroys freedom of speech and freedom of thought.
How low will these people stoop to get money. Just disgusting.
“Using private detectives to investigate fraud is common. We will carry on doing it.”
Fraud? They come up with all sorts of crazy words to describe copyright infringement.
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