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SABAM strikes back!!
General discussionHi, I got this mail from Alain from Purple Moon who used to organise a lot of electro and gothic concerts and parties!! He recently quit becaus of some last minute anullations of bands and strong law-ristrictions.
I personally learned to know a lot of bands on his Eurorock and The invitation-festivals (front242, VNV, Hocico, SITD, ...) but now SABAM is sewing him for having played some music during his festival or something!?! 8o
I feel like I owe him at least one, so I'm posting his call for help here. If anyone can help... let me or him know!!!
Here you can find his mail:
Today, i was summoned by the Belgian copyright organization SABAM concerning the Gothic Festival i organized with The Black Cave in Waregem last August.
I am to appear in court on Tuesday 19th December 2006 at 9am, where SABAM wants to see me convicted to paying a fine of €4490,03 for copyrights by bands that SABAM is supposedly representing. Again they\´re falsely accusing me and have no proof whatsoever.
I\´m hereby asking all those who have any sympathy for Purple Moon to accompany me to the court room for moral support and defense. Also, if there are any lawyers who want to help defend me against SABAM, they\´re very welcome.
I would finally like to invite all Belgian Wave-Gothic-Electro organizations to come to the court room and give us the support we need. In the end, we\´re not just fighting this battle for ourselves but also for them.
This is the address;
RECHTBANK VAN EERSTE AANLEG / derde Kamer
Gerechtsgebouw. Burg. Nolfstraat 10/A
8500 Kortrijk
Tuesday 19th December at 9am
For me, this whole thing is an extra motivation to NEVER EVER do anything for any artist again!
Alain Meulebrouck www.purplemoon.be
Replies
im not sure sending goth people to court is a good idea to impress the judges poor guy
sabam=pigs
Originally posted by : aphone
Cant be there the 19th, but you got all my moral support maneke
me either :(
But you can find here (everybody it's not for the guy wich have probel) : www.lazone.be/sabam/ a very interesting how-to live with sabam where you're a belgian musician or party/concert organizer ... it's made by the team of "la zone" a well known party place in liege wich talk about their experiences of many years ... It's in french ! READ IT ! IT'S VERRY INTERESTING !!!
don't know our law-system very well.... but who has to proove something here? The one who goes to court,right? I guess it's them. Then i ask myself, would an organisation that has to deal with legal issues all the time take the step to court if they haven't got any proof, a well-filled dossier?
How do they come to that specific amount? €4490,03!! it's based on something right?
if you feel you're right then i guess it's up to you to gather all proof of you paying to SABAM anytime you should've done so (whether you agree with it or not -only the law matters) You know they suck, they suck you dry if they have to, be prepared and hope for the best.
I'm feeling for you but i hope you always did what you had to do.
Have met them as well for some schoolparty and for a big school-event. I filled in all needed info - it took away 1/3 of our income but that's how it is.
they have been charged for fraud in the past, reaman... sure that has a reason as well....
fuckheads who pray on creativity
Originally posted by : Distreality
they have been charged for fraud in the past, reaman... sure that has a reason as well....
fuckheads who pray on creativity
yes, and who probably got them??? someone who knew exactly what, when, where and how much he should've... i just say i hope threatofdawn has kept track of all he did...
Well, I suppose he booked bands that are members of Sabam (or their country's respective organisation managing those rights) on his festival, didn't ask Sabam (you need to send a demand for approval or you already get fined...), didn't fill in the papers with the setlists afterwards (Yeah, artists get paid by each song they play...lot of work for nothing...but otherwise the artists don't get paid either, and it can mean 10 or 20 euro per song for big festivals...), and I presume the artists found out now because I think it's the moment of year they get paid. A purple moon event for a large artist can mean a couple hundred euro's more or less on your end of the year bill, I think if they have a bookkeeper, he might have noticed.
You can be against sabam or not, but you have to admit that purple moon, Eurorock, etc. don't exactly book SMALL artists, so they could kind of have expected that kind of thing. Stating not to do anything for any artist anymore is a bit weird, they're not the kind of organisation that runs events for small unknown gothic bands but mainly big bucks ones; If you book a copyrighted artist, you need to inform Sabam and they send you a bill. For something like this the bill may have been a few hundred euro's but of course now that it's gone to court...a few thousand is actually not even THAT much for Sabam, so I'm supposing it will only mean 1 or 2 bands.
Anyway, if you cruise forums like gothweb, I've read quite a few things about this man by artists, too; I don't know and frankly, it doesn't matter. If you're, what, 15 years into the business, you should know that if you book Lacrimosa or Das Ich, you'll be bound to some copyright costs and a good couple of documents to fill in. You're only getting one side of the story here and who's to say what exactly happened?
I'm not DEFENDING sabam here because I got fined myself (for a new ruling they made on websites, not notifying me, then stating they were 'monitoring' my website and I had been violating it for months, go figure...)but unless they get accused of fraud and go down and under, if you want to legally do that kind of stuff you need to fill in their endless stream of documents; You don't have a choice.