• On a Friday: This one, specifically, January 15, 2010. Allan Ellis, former admin of popular torrent site OiNK, was found not guilty of ‘Conspiracy to Defraud’ the music industry.
* Meaning: Your torrent site = Not cool. Sweet coin you made = Kinda cool.
• The following Thursday: The IFPI is considering levying a civil suit to reclaim some of the £200,000 for ‘artists’ it claims to have been swindled.
* Meaning: We want your monies, Mr. Ellis.
It took him two years to clear his name, and all the man wants now is to get on with his life, but clearly the IFPI has other plans. Saying incendiary things like “This is a hugely disappointing verdict which is out of line with decisions made in similar cases around the world,” and “The defendant made nearly £200,000 by exploiting other people’s work without permission,” the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry spokesman John Kennedy (no relation to you know who) is going to try to get his/theirs.
And just a little forbearance of our egos as smart consumers, here’s some sweet legal mumbo-jumbo about the inner workings of this from a real life lawyer:
I think they may be thinking about filing suit on it’s own behalf — as an association of labels. For example, IFPI vs. Oink and DudefromtheArticle[Ellis]. IFPI’s stated goal is to “safeguard the rights of record producers”. Look at the field of imprints published on its homepage. Those aren’t the corporate logos of “various artists”. They’re giant fucking record labels. After the industry lost the “make you shit in your pants” criminal trial to *gasp* a dude and jury of his peers, record companies are going back to more of the same: civil actions. Civil, as in we will sue your ass into bankruptcy and complacence. We know how that’s going. So far, mostly inneffective at stopping what’s practically a tidal wave. And the lawsuit angle definitely doesn’t play as well in the media, at least not when it’s grandmas and 12 year olds.
Whether or not a particular artist gets x% of the money for every song they have stolen, I don’t know. For sure they don’t get 100% passed straight on to them. At the very least the lawyers will be well paid out of any settlement. The record companies don’t just eat their legal expenses and pass the savings on to the bands. How much the labels/”publishers”/producers have agreed to pass on to the individual artists isn’t at all clear to me.
There’s a reason I pay a retainer, to pay off in ‘sitches like this.
Read: Lawyers win.
