Although not as new as Lady Gaga, Pink Floyd is most likely acknowledged by most of us. An active music group, even before the ARPAnet was commercialized (and turned into what we call the Internet), the groups contract stemmed from a time, where bands often wouldn’t own the rights to their own intellectual property ( such as Beatles songs being owned by Michael Jackson).
The dispute,which took place in London, revolved around EMI selling single songs out of Pink Floyd’s Album as download, rather than selling a whole LP.(http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/media/12pink.html?ref=business) Selling single songs, as we all know from the Itunes example, brings in quite some money. Despite EMI’s granted request to exclude the press from the case, Pink Floyd successfully hindered EMI from selling their songs as singles.
However,since EMI already sold singles and ringtones in the past, the court ordered an additional $90.000 to be paid to Pink Floyd.
I find it interesting that the internet seems to occupy courts all over the world, disputing, who owns which rights to what intellectual property. On the other side, if the contract forbid EMI to sell the songs in questions as singles, why would the company allegedly break the contract?
I think this case is interesting because it is a matter of the bands creative decisions interfering with their labels’ ability to exploit content. I can see why a band might not want singles to be sold, but I can also imagine how frustrating that must be for record companies to not be able to sell product where they might be able to. It’s obvious that there needs to be a better communication between the two so that both parties can get what they want.
The excellent summary assited me very much! Saved the site, extremely great categories just about everywhere that I see here! I appreciate the information, thanks.