General Anaesthetic Taking the edge off.

Sony in the shit again

Alejandro Fernandez in a big fucking hat.

A story for the hoisted on one’s own petard file, or it would be if justice wasn’t based on how many lawyers one can afford.

It seems that a Mexican pop star called Alejandro Fernandez recently completed a seven album deal with Sony and went on to sign with Universal Music. Sony however decided to release an eighth album of new tracks without his permission.

Fernandez issued some kind of cease and desist letter to Sony, then Mexican police raided their offices in Mexico City, seizing 6,000 odd copies of the record.

As the /. summary points out, this should be very expensive for Sony, at least going by other copyright infringement cases.

Hmm. Precedent from the Jammie Thomas infringement and distribution case gives us $80K per song. Sony vs. Joel Tenenbaum gives $22.5K per song. So 6,397 CDs at an average of 8 songs/CD is 51,176 infringing songs, with (IMHO) intent to distribute. The damages to Fernandez should be $1,151,460,000 using the Tenenbaum precedent or $4,094,080,000 using the Thomas precedent.

But then those rules only apply to casual file sharers I suppose.

September 12, 2009, by Jimmy B.
Category: music | Tagged: copyright, hoisted on your own petard, music industry, sony