Reddit made this story explode:
Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.
The takeaway from this is that it’s okay to steal intellectual property if you have fancy, expensive lawyers.
No the takeway is that is that he should get himself a lawyer and sue their asses for infringement and recover damages and fees. Plenty of fancy, expensive lawyers who take such cases on contingency and would love a high profile case like this.
It’s his own damn fault if he doesn’t take steps to protect his rights.
that’s right… blame the victim.
The irony, of course, is that this is the kind of infringement copyright laws are *supposed* to protect against–co-opting a work for commercial distribution–while the dreaded “piracy” is almost always just people passing things around for personal use.
uh, the irony is that it was an ad against pirating. “people passing things around for personal use” is also pirating, the type of which copyright laws are also supposed to protect against.
The thing that really is making this a scandal and not only deeply ironic is that the guy who offered to help but wanted the 33% cut his organization buma/stemra doesn’t only have a state monopoly on royalty collection but buma/stemra is itself also the most prominent participant in stichting Brein (the anti-piracy org that didn’t pay the royalties) and as such has mayor influence in Brein. Making this a case of good old corruption.
You can also hijack the news media for a whole week, making them focus on a rainstorm while you vote in un-Constitutional changes to the patent law.