Imagine you’re at your wedding doing the ol’ “smash cake into your wife or husband’s face” move. It’s a great day, all things considered. The sky is the bluest it’s ever been and birds are fluttering around in a non-threatening manner. (That’s what weddings are like, right? I’ve never been to one.) A man dressed like Spy vs. Spy is tiptoeing around the premises, capturing video of your Wonderful Day. Hmm, who invited him? A few weeks go by. Then, one day, a letter arrives in the mail. Apparently you owe a copyright agency tens of thousands of dollars for the unauthorized use of the song “Wonderful Tonight.” That, and your husband or wife has put on 15 pounds.
This exact scenario played out in the Kingdom of Spain, in sleepy Sevilla. A couple got married at a fine establishment called La Doma three years ago. What the couple didn’t know was that an agent for the Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors had sneaked into the wedding and recorded the unauthorized use of a song. Incensed, the Spanish agency demanded €43,179 ($61,662) from La Doma. Then came a countersued, saying that the agency had grossly invaded its right to privacy by crashing the wedding. The courts sided with the couple and fined the evil agency €60,101 ($85,876).
Did the Spanish Society of Wedding Crashers apologize? Nope. Not only that, but it says it won’t give up on the practice of sending “private investigators” to spot copyright infringement.
And to think we complain about the RIAA going overboard with its pursuit of John Doe.
via Ars Technica
I wonder if Eric Clapton would have seen any of that money, had they paid. I’m glad the couple won but I wonder why the Spanish Government has resorted to doing this. What do they get out of this?
Of course Eric Clapton would have seen the money, he gets payed by his publishing company for any use of the song. The record company has nothing to do with it. Besides, why shouldn’t they pay to use the song, he didn’t record it for free. If they can pay tens of thousands of dollars for a wedding, it shouldn’t be too hard paying a small amount for the music. But yeah….people seem to think that music is a human right, and free. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to record, print, distribute, tour and PR the stuff, money that someone has to spend.
Presumably someone did pay to use the song WHEN THEY BOUGHT THE ALBUM.
But I don’t wanna the song in CD format, I wanna it in mp3…
Never been to a wedding? Your kidding right?
I’m not, no. Twenty-two years on this planet and I’ve never been to a wedding.
You lucky S.O.B.
When I got married I told my wife I was never going to another wedding after my brother got married. …I’ve been to four since.
Did you go to your wedding?
Here is my opinion on the matter. A wedding is a private, non-profit function. If music that you have bought can be played at your house party, well, a wedding reception is, in essence, just a large private house party. They aren’t using that song to try and make a profit, as you would if you put the song in a movie, or license it for an advert.
There was no criminal action that took place, so there can be no lawsuit.
What if it was played during the “dollar dance” where the men at the reception pay $1 to dance with the bride?
A wedding is non-profit for the bride and groom, maybe, but generally everyone else involved in the grand event is making a buck (or here, a Euro). La Doma makes money hosting wedding receptions, and they fatten their profit margins by selling stuff they don’t pay for. This isn’t the RIAA going after some grandmother whose idiot grandchild downloaded a few MP3s; this is a copyright agency going after a business that as an element of their business plan stiffs the artists who have created the music that’s an important part of the experience.
This was a misleading article from Crunchgear. They make it seem like the wedding couple is getting sued, which is not what happened at all. What happened is that a Spanish court wanting to serve up some homecooking is using the “privacy” argument to make sure Spanish businesses can rip off music largely created outside of Spain.
Yup… They sued La Doma (the restaurant), not the couple… Oh and the camera guy… 86,000 euros in fines too.
Milo seems to be the kind of person who thinks it is resonable that you can copyright the Happy Birthday song and rake in the cash when it’s used in movies (or, given this incident, at home).
Prepetual copyright for all ideas! What could possibly go wrong?
Good for them. They should have caught him and gave him an ass wooping.
Publish the pictures of their agents on The Internet so people know who to look for. Sunlight squashes all bugs.
Seriously, WTF?
Seriously, WTF?
This is great… The couple must have had a great lawyer.
Seriously…this is insane.
Also, Milo’s comment is hilarious as well.
Seems like he’s one of the spies!
If you hire a band or a DJ then you don’t have to worry about that. They should have the proper licensing.
In Croatia, if you organize a wedding you have to pay a fee to Intellectual property protection Institute (ZAMP – state authority) for usage of copyright material. This is regulated by law and it can not be avoided. They have their agents who visit you and can issue a penalty ticket.
Shouldn’t the spy be prosecuted for illegally recording the copyrighted material?
waiting for michael arrington to make a comment about spaniards, as he made about the french :-)
such a comment would boost comments on this post!
waiting for michael arrington to make a comment about spaniards, as he made about the french :-)
such a comment would boost comments on this post!
So they had an iPhone to capture this on? A new blackberry? Wifi mobile camera?
Just trying to figure out why this is posted to Crunch “Gear”…
Because we’ve written about piracy, copyright, RIAA, etc. stuff since Day One.
They write (and well) not only about gadgets, but issues surrounding technology. No whining Michael, or banish yourself to engadget.
Italy has similar very strict rules. You have to pay off the SIAE (like the RIAA), which is a very mafia like organization (the relevant bits are at the end of the article):
http://padovachronicles.welton.it/2005/07/11/an-italian-wedding-act-1
There is an American agency similar to this that will call up retail locations and ask them a bunch of questions about their usage of radio or music on the store premises. They will try to collect a fee for the retailers usage of the copyrighted music that is being played on the radio or from your music device.
I’m Spanish. Do you know what the real problem behind all this is? Ok, I tell you. The problem is that a bunch of lazy ‘authors’ want to keep living the high live without actually working, just robbing money from the poor people that want to play their fauvorite song at their wedding without worrying about these thieves. It’s really pathetic. But it’s not only at weddings, they apply what they call the ‘canon’ to all sort of items and activities, so basically they make sure they don’t have to create anything at all during the rest of their lives.
SGAE is Spains’ RIAA. They get money from every product you can store music in, from a blank CD to a memory card to a phone, and it doesn’t matter what you use the product for. If you buy CDs to back up your own photos (yes, your own photos) you are paying to them (unless you buy from outside Spain), and with the money they are getting (a lot of money!) they are paying their top artists and buying many other companies and buildings (but they said they are non for profit!).
They are friends with the goverment (’artists’ gave strong support to Zapatero’s campaign), and that’s why they, a private company, can directly collect this tax that is affecting anyone in the country.
I’m all to protect anyone’s work, but what they are doing right now is stoling us.
crashing a wedding to find copyright music is about stupid level 4…getting fined $85,876 and will still continue to do it, stupid level 10!
if it worked I could understand…
There is nothing intellectual about property…
A barber in Israel was sued for having radio play in the background while working. In Denmark cab drivers don’t have a radio in the cab for that same reason. These greedy bastards make this world a worse place for everybody.
Uri allow me to correct you. I live in Denmark and have spend a fair amount of times in cabs here ;) – and they do have radios and these radios do play music =)
Sounds like revenge to me. In their opinion, the entire music industry got the big shaft when Napster came along. They missed out on gazillions of dollars in royalties and sales during that time period. Now it’s time for payback. They’ve got to fuck you one way or another. This is the new “pay $17.00 for a CD for one song and the rest of them suck.” Only now they have a chance of getting way more than $17 of your money.
This was inevitable and probably unstoppable, though. If Napster hadn’t done it, someone else would have. The industry dug it’s own grave in many ways.
Oh well. We might still be paying $17.00 for a crummy CD and carrying around walkman CD players if things had not happened the way they did.
Lesson of the day: Interrogate everyone with a video camera at a private event. If they don’t belong, destroy the tape, and “escort” them out.
Xeno seems to be the kind of person that thinks that musicians should work for free.
I don’t have problems with paying a reasonable price to the author, I’m a kind of author myself, but I don’t wanna/need this intermediaries winning more money than me, without doing nothing…
SGAE (Spanish RIAA) was for long the #1 Google result for “ladrones” (robbers). A few facts will illustrate why:
- A few years ago SGAE fined a school of children with special needs, only because they used copyrighted songs during a children school party. Only after the press made noise on the news, they waived the fine.
- Spanish Prime Minister Mr. Zapatero was heavily supported by the “artists” in the electoral campaign. In return, the government approved a bill, so that SGAE collects a tax on every disc, hard-drive, ipod, cellphone and any device that can carry music. e.g. For a hard-drive you have to pay 12 EURO to SGAE, even if you use it only to store your pictures.
- SGAE is pushing the government for the 3-advices before cutting the Internet Access. That is the way they want to make “culture” available for all
- the Spanish Minister of Culture funded with 8 million Euro the works of an “artist” to build the dome of one of the halls in Geneva U.N. building. Half a million Euro of the artist’s wages was derived from a budget allocated for Development Aid.
“Artists” and the socialist Government in Spain are very good friends.
Sounds like a privacy infringment.
On the other hand, I think the original intention was to bust La Doma (a restaurant, a public place) who apparently hadn’t paid for the rights to play music.
Don’t know about Spain, but here in Finland if you own a public place (cab, cafe, restaurant, night-club), you pay a monthly fixed fee to the local RIAA (in Spain SGAE) and you are clear. The amount is quite small (about 10-20eur/month – atleast that was the case for a cafe I once owned). That will allow you to play any music and as much as you wish. Those cafes, retsaurants and cafes that are too stingy to pay this fee may blame themselves if they run into trouble. Now, crashing a party and violate privacy is a totally different story.
On the other hand, at home and at private venues you don’t have to pay this fee.
The problem is that the content remuneration model has change, because internet had connected the creator with the consumer, and all the people in the middle, suddenly, don’t win money with this, so they invent new ways of winning money instead of modifying their business model.
This seems to be an unusual use of private investigators, however, PIs are used in many other unorthodox situations as well.