Belgian Anti-Piracy Group Facing Copyright Fraud, Embezzlement & Money Laundering Charges
from the funny-how-that-works dept
The Belgian anti-piracy group, SABAM, has been one of the most aggressive anti-piracy groups out there. The group recently lost two huge court cases in which it tried to get courts to force ISPs and hosting firms to put in place filters to stop infringement. Perhaps more controversially, the organization has tried to require social networks to pay a flat fee for all the infringement happening on their networks. A year ago, there was a story of SABAM taking cash for a band they didn't represent after a TV show played a "joke" on the group.However, in what appears not to be a joke, it looks like SABAM and some of its execs are facing some pretty serious charges, including "falsifying accounts to cover up bribe payments, abuse of trust, copyright fraud and embezzlement," according to TorrentFreak. Apparently, according to the charges, SABAM wasn't very good at actually distributing the money it was supposed to distribute to artists. Things to keep in mind every time one of these groups insists it's looking out for the interests of artists...
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Filed Under: belgium, copyright, embezzlement, fraud, money laundering
Companies: sabam
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Look. Learn. Listen.
They represent their stock holders and not you. You are just a paycheck for them. They only care about extracting the most profit from you as fast as they can because they believe your band will only be famous for a minute.
So if you plan on a career as a musician then you need to find the long term solution.
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Re: Look. Learn. Listen.
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Re: Look. Learn. Listen.
So, I guess it is actually worse--they represent the interests of the leaders of the organization and no one else.
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...erm...
Who trusted them??
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How ironic
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Re: How ironic
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Re: Re: How ironic
They're in a catch 22 then - because without laws there would be no piracy!
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Re: Re: Re: How ironic
Because people would have no reason to get dressed up, poke out an eye to justify the eye patch, cut off their leg for a peg... but then we'd need laws to protect the parrot industry I guess....
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Missing the point...
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Re: Missing the point...
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The Moral Highground?
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This is considered a normal business practice in the U.S. and mostly goes unpunished.
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No one will want to do a $100 million dollar scam anymore if filthy pirates are just going to rip off their methods for their own gain.
Sheesh.
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Re: !
These jerks should've come up with their own original scams rather than pirating the same old scams which have been done over and over again in lots of places...
Psh! Posers.
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Trolls to chase the trolls who were looking after the artist's interest.
Will keep lawyers working for years, think of all the new jobs it would create.
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Re:
1) dig a hole in the ground, bury estimated amount of money
2) shoot all the lawyers/anti-piracy 'agents'
3) PROFIT!
Works even better, as you create jobs in the weapons and burials industries
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Then, unless one of them has a previous record of misconduct the judge will give them a slap on the wrist sentence and tell them not to do it again. Which will of course be ignored, only this time they will be more secretive about it.
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In other words, they were so blatant in their actions that they may end up being legally liable for what some of us have been saying they were guilty of for years.
Now if we could just get some of them actually thrown in jail.
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Ahhh...
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Curious to read how he spins this one.
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Re:
In the ones where the labels are clearly the bad guys and most definitely in the wrong, they never put in appearance. Every other article though, you can bet they'll be in. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds, but when caught red handed, they'll shut up. But only then.
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Oh, wait...
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To be honest, it's really difficult to ignore the good in this case. How do you ignore something that wasn't there to begin with?
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I can hear the defense now
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