Now, the Department of Trade and Industry is interested!

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 19/12/2003 - 0:05

From the British Government Department of Trade and Industry, an email to me:
<<<
I am writing an internal document for the DTI on Intellectual Property and Digital Rights Management issues for the content sector. I remember reading about your website in a journal and was interested to note that it mentioned that many of the original artists never got paid for their work. Could you please provide me more information on this? For example, I would like to know if they had contracts with the companies.
>>>

!!

It is me, or has the world got more surreal again?

Chris

Lagerfeldt · Post by **Lagerfeldt** » 19/12/2003 - 0:41

Interesting.

Post by **tas** » 19/12/2003 - 7:13

Hehe... how bizarre. Wonder what if anything will come of it.

Btw chris, it's often a question i gave to many musicians in the interviews section of remix64.com, might be worthwhile having a gander through them maybe.

merman · Post by **merman** » 19/12/2003 - 10:23

Reminds me of an item on the Big Breakfast a few years ago. The Performing Rights Society asked for their help in tracking down session musicians who had performed on certain records to pay their royalties (after a court decision gave them more rights). The guy who played violin on the Bluebells' "Young at Heart" got a cheque for several thousand quid...

Copyright and performance rights are even more important in these days of digitally perfect copies.

Feekzoid · Post by **Feekzoid** » 19/12/2003 - 11:51

Will this have any repercussions for crazy oriental C64 singing woman I wonder?

putzi · Post by **putzi** » 19/12/2003 - 12:39

btw Chris, is this someone trying to make money by selling a SID2WAVE-audio-CD? Never heard of it before:
http://s1.amazon.de/exec/varzea/ts/exch ... 41-7148027

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 19/12/2003 - 15:40

Yeah, that's the "Tigerbeat" release. It's featured here before, but there's nothing on there I represent. Warren encouraged the composers on it (who weren't asked or paid) to write to Tigerbeat about it. I guess they just didn't care. Shitheads.

As for Oriental women: I think the DTI is more interested in game musicians not being paid originally by the software companies.

Chris

merman · Post by **merman** » 19/12/2003 - 17:21

Considering how little some of them were paid in the first place, it hardly seems worth the DTI's effort to recoup it... Although you could argue that re-use of Hubbard's "One Man & His Droid" in Invade-a-Load is 'similar' to the orchestra's case against Disney for the DVD edition of Fantasia...

Chris Abbott · Post by **Chris Abbott** » 19/12/2003 - 17:37

> Considering how little some of them were paid in the first place,
> it hardly seems worth the DTI's effort to recoup it...

They're not actually going to DO anything: they're just going to write about it for an internal document. It was just interesting to me that our little niche will be mentioned in Government circles

Chris

Post by **tas** » 19/12/2003 - 17:43

Please stand the right honorable Chris abbott