Big Music sues Ellen DeGeneres show
September 11,2009
" Big Music sues Ellen DeGeneres show
Now they've gone and done it!
Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music can get away with dragging young children through the mainstream media for unproven, non-existent 'copyright crime'. They can go after a dead grandmother, a single mum living on a medical disability pensions, a multiple sclerosis victim, a home health aide who doesn't know one end of the computer from the other -- the line forms on the right, babe, as Mac the Knife puts it. But now they've gone too far.
In what could turn out to be their worst PR disaster yet, they've sued the latest American Idol judge and darling of afternoon (and morning, and evening) TV, Ellen DeGeneres. Well, they've sued her producers, anyway. Named in the copyright infringement lawsuit are Arista Music, Atlantic Recording Corporation, Big Beat Records, Capitol Records, Motown Record Company, Priority Records, Rhino Entertainment Company, Sire Records Company, Sony Music Entertainment, UMG Recordings, Virgin Records America, Warner Bros. In a court document reeking with indignation and self-pity, not to mention outraged innocence, Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music, in a nutshell, say the producers of the Ellen DeGeneres show have been using Big 4 'product' without a licence since Day One. More than 1,000 songs were used during the "beloved comic's 'dance over' section - where the star strolls to her stage through the audience at the beginning of each show," says Contactmusic. Asked why they didn't get sound recording licenses, according to the legal document, the producers said they, "did not roll that way".
The lawsuit says the Ellen DeGeneres show has used "recordings by virtually every major current artist of popular music" since its start in 2003 which, incidentally, is when, in their hopeless efforts to gain complete control of all online music distribution, the Big 4 started terrorising the people who keep them in business with phony lawsuits.
But this time around, they're represented not by their traditional extortion specialists, the RIAA, but by a Nashville law firm. Will the DeGeneres show settle out of court? Or will they stand firm and be ordered to to pay a staggering amount in ruinous restitution fees? Just like Jammie Thomas-Rasset who owes multi-billion-dollar corporate music industry $1.92 million not for airing the songs on international TV, but for sharing 24 of them online?
You know the answer to that. Definitely stay tuned. "
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