News

France Charges Virgin with Music Piracy

Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 at 11:10 AM - by

A French court has found Virgin guilty of selling a song online without permission of the copyright holder. According to the International Herald Tribune, the music reseller downloaded Madonna's Hung Up from the France Télécom Web site, broke the copy protection, and then started selling the song on the virginmega.fr Web site.

At the time, Warner Music had granted France Télécom exclusive rights to sell the song online.

Hervé Payan, senior vice president for content partnership and service at France Télécom, said "This is an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company."

Virgin claims it was acting in the interest of consumers. Laurent Fiscal, a director of Virgin's online store stated "We have always been ahead of the others posing questions that look to the interests of consumers. We are precursors in the question of exclusive sales and think a debate should take place between sales platforms and producers."

Warner sold the one-week exclusive rights to sell Madonna's song to France Télécom for €500,000 (about US$628,500). Virgin was fined €600,00 (about $754,200).

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Bosco said:

member since 03 Jun 2002 with 999 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Jun 28, 2006 6:12 pm

This story is quite believable. Now, if the story had been "Italy Charges Virgin With Music Policy", it would not have been so believable. It might has well have been "Italy Charges Wise Man With Music Policy". You all see where I'm going with this?

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iJack said:

member since 13 Jun 2001 with 272 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Jun 28, 2006 7:01 pm

Not really, as the title of this piece is, "France Charges Virgin with Music Piracy" - not " Music Policy."

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Bosco said:

member since 03 Jun 2002 with 999 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Jun 28, 2006 7:53 pm

Piracy, not Policy. "Italy Charges Virgin with Music Piracy". OK, now does anyone see where I'm going with this?

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LaurieF said:

member since 15 Jun 2001 with 3510 posts, TMO Forum Mod, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Jun 28, 2006 11:13 pm

Well, you're certainly not going to Australia with this! Jesus couldn't have been born there because...well, you obviously know why...

<duck>

(For the humour-impaired: no-one likes their neighbours: Americans tell Canadian jokes, West Germans tell East German jokes, Bostonians tell New Hampshire jokes (well, I've heard a couple, which I recognised!), mainland Australians tell Tasmanian and Queensland jokes, and unsurprisingly New Zealanders tell Australian jokes.)

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