Dutch Collection Society Found To Be Source Of Infringing Content

from the everyone's-a-pirate dept

Remember the story about the composer who found his music featured in anti-piracy ads and had a difficult time getting paid out, triggering a corruption scandal at collection society Buma/Stemra? It was obviously a bit ironic that the music in question was used in anti-piracy ads, but it appears the irony truck forgot to unload a package - filled to the brim with humiliation.

Using YouHaveDownload, a tool that tracks torrent transfers on various public torrent trackers and matches them with IPs, a popular Dutch weblog has uncovered piracy at that aforementioned collection society. They scanned the IP range of Buma/Stemra's HQ and among the pirated material they found:

• An episode of Entourage (whois).
• A copy of the game Battlefield 3 (whois).

The tool only covers about 4 to 6% of what's available on the networks it tracks, so it's possible that there's a lot more sharing evil piracy going on from their offices as well.

If anything, this scandal really shouldn't be a scandal. Anti-piracy lobbying and campaigning has led to sharing becoming a taboo, while the money spent could have been used to facilitate sharing and to build sustainable business models on top of that. Despite pirates among their own ranks, organizations like Buma/Stemra feel that the Dutch policy of downloading from unauthorized sources for personal use being legal should be altered (read their statement). Even though the Dutch parliament disagrees, the Dutch government is trying to get exactly such laws altered citing EU pressure, even though the Digital Agenda Commissioner, Neelie Kroes (herself Dutch), has stated opposite goals. With people in parliament who do not know "what or who is a torrent," it's not entirely unlikely that the govt actually manages to get the law changed after all.

Buma/Stemra was quick to respond and acknowledge that IPs are not reliable to determine infringers. Apparently the IP addresses used for piracy (ending in .246 and .248) cannot be used by employees to access the web internet, so the collection society claims they were spoofed. (Update: their, now removed (cache), statement said internet, instead of web - apologies). Oddly, the IP from which the email with the press announcement was sent, ~.247, hasn't been spoofed. Did I mention they brought up spoofing after a spokesperson first claimed that the IP addresses could have originated from anywhere in the business park even though everything from ~.240 to ~.255 is linked to Buma/Stemra's office?

Sure, this scandal is humiliating, but it's not as embarrassing as the war against innovation. You can use this moment to better understand the human nature of sharing, to understand that downloads don't translate directly to lost sales, and to rethink your lobbying strategy to push for a more sane framework. Or, you know, you can continue to upset fans whilst amusingly tumbling from one scandal into the next.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if there are more pirates in disguise amongst hardline politicians, RIAA & MPAA folks, and other classic opponents of more flexible copyright legislation. You all know where to find the tool now, so perhaps it can happen through a lesson about crowdsourcing. That is, have fun and see what you can find...

Filed Under: caught, copyright, europe, netherlands, piracy, youhavedownload
Companies: buma/stemra

Anti-Piracy Group Caught Pirating Song For Anti-Piracy Ad... Corruption Scandal Erupts In Response

from the wow dept

The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is one of the most aggressive of the anti-piracy groups out there. So there's some amusement in watching as it gets caught up in a scandal that started when it pirated music for an anti-piracy campaign. BREIN had asked musician Melchoir Rietveldt to compose a song for a video that was only to be used at a local film festival. The terms of the deal were strict: the song was only for that one anti-piracy video at that one film festival. However, Rietveldt later discovered that the anti-piracy ad was being used all over the place -- a fact he discovered when he bought a Harry Potter DVD and noticed the video... with his music.

After determining that the music had been used tens of millions of times in such an unauthorized manner, he contacted the local music collection agency, Buma/Stemra, asking them to seek somewhere around $1.3 million owed from BREIN. Buma/Stemra ignored him. Eventually, however, apparently a Buma/Stemra board member, Jochem Gerrits, reached out, and said he could help Rietveldt get paid... but with some questionable conditions. According to TorrentFreak:

In order for the deal to work out the composer had to assign the track in question to the music publishing catalogue of the Gerrits, who owns High Fashion Music. In addition to this, the music boss demanded 33% of all the money set to be recouped as a result of his efforts.

The conversation between Gerrits and the composer’s financial advisor was recorded by Pownews, and during the conversation the financial advisor confronts Gerrits with his unconventional proposal.

“Why do you have to earn money?” he asks, as usually all of the money goes directly to the artists.

“It could be because a lot of people in the industry know that they are in trouble when I get involved,” Gerrits responds, adding that he can bring up the topic immediately in a board meeting next week.

Once again trying to find confirmation for the proposal, the composer’s advisor later asks if the music boss indeed wants one-third of the money.

“Yes, that’s the case, but then [the composer] would make 660,000 euros and now he has nothing,” Gerrits responds calmly.

This is apparently making news across the Netherlands, and Gerrits has resigned. As for BREIN, it's insisting that the whole thing is "a contractual issue" and that it is "not involved."

Filed Under: anti-piracy, copyright, corruption, netherlands
Companies: brein, buma/stemra

Dutch Collection Society Backs Down Slightly On Video Embeds

from the but-not-really dept

Dennis Laumen alerts us to an update on the story concerning Dutch music collection society Buma/Stemra's plan to charge bloggers for embedding YouTube videos on their site. After the story got lots of publicity, Buma appears to have backed down ever so slightly, saying that "amateur" bloggers are off the hook. But, the definition of "amateur" is basically only if you don't have any ads. Put up some Google AdSense... and suddenly you're a "pro" who has to pay up.

Filed Under: collection society, embeds, netherlands, performance, youtube videos
Companies: buma/stemra

Dutch Collection Society Looks To Charge Bloggers For Embedding YouTube Videos

from the pay-up...-again dept

Over the past year, we've noticed an explosion in ridiculous attempts by music collection societies (often totally clueless about technology) to extend their ability to collect for positively ridiculous things (while also looking to significantly increase their collection rates). The latest, sent in by Dennis Laumen, is that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is claiming that it's going to start charging bloggers 130 euros for every 6 videos they embed. This is, of course, technologically clueless. The embedding of a video doesn't change the fact that it's actually playing from and hosted at the original site (such as YouTube). All embedding does is allow the video to appear via the other page, even though, technically, it's all still happening at its original location. Claiming that this is somehow a "new" publication of the content is technologically incorrect.

This is somewhat similar to ASCAP's recent technologically clueless claim that embedding YouTube videos should count as a public performance (along with its other recent claims that iTunes 30-second previews and your mobile phone ringtones should also be counted as public performances). You sort of get the feeling that many of these collection societies came to the conclusion about two years ago that they're functionally obsolete, and rather than adapt to the times, they've all agreed to the same basic principle of going out in a blaze of glory. They're trying to vastly increase rates while covering any and ever attempt to use music in any way, bleeding everyone dry while making it that much more difficult for up-and-coming acts to get heard (since venues that promote them can't pay the crazy rates) and (even better) setting up their payout mechanisms to massively favor the top acts.

For the most part, these collection societies are simply being greedy, without putting a single thought towards actually helping composers and songwriters. They're looking for every single penny they could possibly collect today, and ignoring the medium and long-term impact of trying to charge for any sort of promotional behavior.

Filed Under: collection society, embeds, netherlands, performance, youtube videos
Companies: buma/stemra

Dutch Music Collection Society Loses Artist Royalties In The Stock Market

from the good-job,-guys dept

The various music collection societies keep insisting that they're just the important middlemen helping make sure artists get the royalties they're due. Except, for some reason, they keep getting caught not actually giving that money to artists, but hanging on to it themselves. Billboard reports that the Dutch collection society, Buma/Stemra, is happily telling people that revenue rose by 2% last year -- though, oddly, the Billboard report leaves out one rather interesting detail. Reader Marcel de Jong notes that Buma/Stemra invested a bunch of the money it collected for artists into the stock market and then lost a chunk of it, so it's paying artists less money than it collected for them. What's unclear is if Buma/Stemra would have paid out more if it had made money... and also why it's gambling on the stock market with money it supposedly collected for artists.

Filed Under: collections societies, losses, money, royalties
Companies: buma/stemra