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Where the bad guys live ...

Funny incident: At the very same time a woman had been arrested for accidently taping a few minutes of 'Twilight' while enjoying her sister's birthday party, all four big record labels got sued over 300,000 pirated tracks by a group of canadian musicians

The 22-year old Chicago woman Samantha Tumpach was taping parts of her sister's birthday party, held in different locations, among them a movie theater. One clip shows the family and friends singing happy birthday, while part of the movie is seen in the background. The end of the story: Samantha had been arrested for recording three minutes of the newest 'Twilight', spent two days in jail and might face up to three years in jail for copyright infringement.

Meanwhile the major record labels Warner, Sony BMG, EMI, and Universal are being accused of pirating 300,000 tracks since the mid-80's, betraying their artists of nearly $6 billion USD. The reason behind this: In the 1980s compilation CDs became very popular and the labels produced since then thousands of them - without asking their artists and simply putting the earned money on a 'pending list' they 'forgot' for more than 25 years.

"The record labels have devoted insufficient resources to identifying and paying the owners of musical works on the Pending Lists.", says David Basskin, President and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. Now a group of musicians have filed a class-action lawsuit against all four big record labels over illegal use of their work.

Now, what might be their excuse?


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Link: Via Afterdawn
Link: Via Torrentfreak

Made on 10.12.2009

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