CE-Oh no he didn't! Part XX - Warner Music CEO "fairly certain" his kids pirate music

We're going to assume you're well versed with the RIAA, just about the most god-forsaken industry group that ever did roam the earth (much like its unofficial partner in crime, the MPAA); and more importantly for the purposes of this post, Warner Music, one of the four major labels, which all, incidentally, back the RIAA. So what did Edgar Bronfman, CEO of Warner Music, have to say when questioned as to whether any of his seven kids pirate music? "I'm fairly certain that they have, and I'm fairly certain that they've suffered the consequences." Funny, we haven't heard about any inter-familial lawsuits involving Bronfman sr. v. Bronfman jr. concerning definitions in fair use and music piracy. In fact, given that he knows what pirates live in his house using his internet connection, it should only follow that he sue his children into eternal debt (not before having Warner Music shut off their household internet connection at the ISP level). After all, what's good for the goose is good -- ah forget it. Every time we try to apply logic and reason to the executives behind the RIAA our brains do a zero divide.

You, Bronfman! Monday at four o'clock, after school. Be there, punk.

[Thanks, Josh]

[Paul D @ Dec 4th 2006 7:28AM]

Actually, since Bronfman and his fellow thugs routinely sue kids *and* their parents into poverty and bankruptcy, the same should be forced on him personally. Throw him on the street and make *him* a lifelong debtor to some jerks he's never heard of. I wonder how the hypocrite will like that?

By the way, I love how Tycho at Penny Arcade described music industry executives today: "You need to understand that these people are really and truly crazy. They imagine that their industry is not, as you might have though previously, merely a conduit for a specific type of product. Rather, they believe that their industry is the avatar of music itself, and flush with this knowledge they gesture from their litter, seeking tribute."

Gesturing from their litters, perfectly put!

[Yenraf @ Dec 19th 2008 1:07PM]

I know a girl who got sued and had to drop out of college because she didn't have enough money to keep going and pay the settlement... sad but true...

[shirizaki @ Dec 4th 2006 7:29AM]

Son: DADDY, I want this song!
Ed: No son, you have to buy a CD.
Son: iTunes?
Ed: EVIL!
Son: CD's are $15 and I only want 1 song. Can't I use a website that'll give me a file that I can use everywhere?
Ed: No, because I can't control how you'll use it and somehow in the future make you buy it again.

[JRA219psu @ Dec 4th 2006 3:14PM]

hahahahaha well said.

" Son: iTunes?
Ed: EVIL! "

haha

[ScottMaximus @ Dec 4th 2006 7:36AM]

Ed: Son, don't you know you're supporting the artist by buying our overpriced stamped disks?

Son: Bullshit, I'm supporting an ancient distribution monopoly by a chosen group of corporations.

Ed: Son, I told you not to read those crazies on the internet!

[Unomi @ Dec 4th 2006 7:57AM]

In the days of Mozart DRM was pretty easy.... He was the only one who had the notes to let the orchestra play the music.

Who wanted to listen to his music (like the Kaiser) had to go to his concert.

Most people couldn't afford music and many only heard something musical once in their entire life.

Nowadays every square inch could contain someones lifework ten times, like on a USB-stick.

If they manage to control all the music, I don't mind to never listen to music ever . It's a luxury, not a primary thing.

- Unomi -

[iNap @ Dec 4th 2006 12:06PM]

Mozart's day didn't have any sort of DRM because music wasn't digital (and therefore couldn't give the abbreviation the D.

[thinkmassive @ Jan 7th 2007 11:54PM]

Actually people have been playing music for longer than we've had civilizations. The belief that not everyone is musically inclined is a more recent phenomenon. Americans are now spending more per year buying music than prescription drugs, and the world knows how much we love our pharmaceuticals!

[CB @ Dec 4th 2006 8:23AM]

I used to be able to see both sides of the argument until I saw 'Britains richest pissheads' or something like that and a top UK record exec was buying Bentleys to entertain herself one rainy afternoon, she only wanted one but the old problem..which colour? So she bought two at 300 grand each. (thats 600,000 dollars each)
That's someone who SELLS other peoples talent.

[v_dogg @ Dec 4th 2006 8:35AM]

This just ticks me off

[Pete @ Dec 4th 2006 8:42AM]

Surely the RIAA has to follow this up?

[kevan @ Dec 4th 2006 8:52AM]

Straight to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect 200,000,000 dollars.

[sdean @ Dec 4th 2006 9:09AM]

anyone want a good song about this check out "the great American Bottle Neck" by Gavin Castleton...also on the cd its on both before and after the song there is a nice talk about digital piracy

This message is to every musician speaking out against file sharing:
get your facts straight, and stop regurgitating everything the major label tells you.
Anyone still clinging to the cage-format for music is either a middleman or lazy. Squidnecks

You major label suckers make me laugh
Do you really think your label would come out and say, "Hey we cut your paycheck in half because you've got to help pay for the 250 billion copies we give away. Have they mentioned when they cut new releases by 25% sales dropped 4.1% and they blamed it on P2P? Have they mentioned that they responded to that drop by raising the cost of your CD $1 every year? Does that seem like a good business move to you? Or does that smell like fear?
Ask yourself what kind of business would cut research and development first? I'll tell you: the business that's about to make it's bed up in a mother fuckin hearse.
While Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are trying to convince you that free listeners are a bad thing, those same five labels that pay them are charging you $500,000 to buy you spins
While you're negotiating whether or not the latest Napster pays you 1/3 of a cent per download, Comcast and AOL are turning the information highway into a toll road.
you know the end is near when Britney Spears is calling it a moral issue
they've positioned you right between their wallets and your fans
they can't really expect to turn the tide with a few pathetic lawsuits
So you gotta ask yourself how does one stop a flood? You build a damn.
IT'S THE ISPs, IT'S THE ISPs!
Comcast will have every last consumer on their knees
starting with 5.3 million subscribers to cable access high speed
they own the wires, so they can discriminate with bandwidth and queuing fees
guaranteed monopoly by the FCC so

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
until businessmen are businessmen
and art is art again. Rock

this is not an issue of children not recognizing value in art
this is an issue of children recognizing value-less art
getting artists paid doesn't even play a part
The truth is
for the first time since it's creation, the playing field of American music
was almost leveled, and that, in the opinion of five
big wallets, is unacceptable.
Finally the world was given a voice to respond to the one-sided conversation conducted
by the music industry for the last 80 + years. Anyone who tells you that we've always
had a voice, and it's in the form of money spent, knows good and well where your money
goes when there's only one product on the shelf. You disagree? We can discuss it every four years in November
This already happened but most people weren't alive or don't remember. Radio showed up in the 20's and labels panicked, declared unlicensed broadcasts illegal, and lobbied all sorts of garbage until Capitol Records came along and broke ranks in '42. When they rose to the top of the pile, the other labels woke up and embraced radio too.
we already know how the story ends - the new technology becomes consolidated and sold to one or two old white men.

Maybe the RIAA isn't right, it's just afraid.
Afraid that artists will find a new way to get paid
maybe removing profit from the picture will expose the parasites
who spent 19 million in campaign donations every year to extend your copyrights
we'll see who's still making records when there's no compensation.
if there's no beer at the party, the only people left will be there for the conversation.
Maybe art is only art when it's depraved.
Maybe the deck is so stacked, we need to start from scratch.

We're standing on the verge of an artistic cleansing of biblical proportions I say bring it
when the wickedness of big business is great in the earth
and it will even try to sell the waters that it's drowning in
marching two rappers
two rockers
two composers
two programmers
onto a pirate ship
in a free-market flood
and though I may soon be swept away
I can't wait to see who steps in to take my place

[Rynth @ Dec 4th 2006 9:36AM]

Zero divide? you mean a divide by zero me ol' fella'.

[Alex @ Dec 4th 2006 10:22AM]

Say what you want about DRMs and how they are restricting and not very user friendly...however

I still find it hard to believe that some people still think its right to download music illegally (like my who commented here). How can you justify downloading somebody else's intellectual property without compensating them in teh way they choose? It defeats the whole notion of intellectual property. If you don't like the distribution, or pricing scheme,then don't get hte music. If you say you can't afford it, then you can't afford to listen to music (or any other intellectual property).

Just because technology makes something easy, doesn't make it right...

oh, and this article about the Warner CEO's kids is barely news...come on engadget...

[Dixonij @ Dec 4th 2006 12:40PM]

Barely news? I'm sorry but the fact that a CEO of a major music label saying that his kids most likely pirate music is big. The fact they go after somewhat random kids and sue for millions that they don't have and now one of the suers has that problem at home, what now? If nothing happens from this, it will just go to show that such rich/higher-ups in companies can get away with stuff that average Joes can't.

[b00da @ Dec 4th 2006 3:55PM]

Nonsense. Are you honestly saying that out of all the people in the world, all of the people in their basements, garages, bedrooms, closets, living rooms, bars, halls, wherever, not one of those people has ever written a chord change, chorus, verse, or bridge that sounds exactly like something you can hear in mainstream music?

Intellectual property and copywright laws don't protect property...they just protect the first person to fill out the paperwork. I will admit that there are cases where copyrights are worthy and useful, but there are also cases where they are not.

[umrain @ Dec 4th 2006 10:39AM]

"Intellectual property" is propaganda term pushed by the media cartels. It isn't remotely actual "property" by any legal defintion. That said, while copyright infringement is obviously illegal, if the music CEO lets his kids get away with it, he must not think it is really that serious. At least the kids are not engaged in illegal price-fixing schemes I guess.

[0_0 @ Dec 4th 2006 1:26PM]

"Intellectual property" is propaganda term pushed by the media cartels. It isn't remotely actual "property" by any legal defintion."

Sounds like you've swallowed too many propaganda-twinkies yourself, kid. Intellectual property is a very real thing, especially by legal definition. And that's how it should be for everyone who uses either his brain or his creativity to make a living.

The tricky thing is how to enforce it. The music industry unfortunately does it the wrong way.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 4th 2006 10:39AM]

I find it amusing that Dilbert covered the whole "CEO > Everyone else" this past Friday ending a group of company earnings strips:
http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20061202.html

[Christian Martin @ Dec 4th 2006 10:43AM]

If the recording industry is in such peril, why do some hip hop artists have necklaces that cost close to US$1m?

[nevil nayak @ Dec 4th 2006 10:52AM]

lol this article belongs on theonion.com - hahah.

[Sir Edward Blackshanks @ Dec 4th 2006 12:10PM]

DON�T YOU GET IT YET?! THE RULES/LAWS DON�T EQUALLY APPLY TO US MULTI-MILLIONAIRES AND OUR SEEDS!

Like a famous Poet from Shaolin once said: �CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME, CREAM GET THE MONEY DOLLAR, DOLLAR BILL YALL�. Love that tune and unlike the artist, I still collect BIG $$$�s every time it�s played. Sorry METH, L�sOL...

Yours Truly
Sir Edward Blackshanks
CEO DirtBag Records

[Sam @ Dec 4th 2006 12:35PM]

i will never tire of the CE-Oh no he didn't column it gets me everytime.

[umrain @ Dec 4th 2006 3:12PM]

"Intellectual property" is of course a real term, but it's quite disingenuous to liken it actual physical property when it bears only superficial similarities.

No reasonable lawyer would expect the same laws that apply to normal property to apply to intellectual property. It's an entirely different set of rules because they are entirely different things, kid.

[jason @ Dec 4th 2006 3:07PM]

this is very noteworthy news engadget! this man should take a dose of his own medicine for sure.

martin- about why rappers have $1M chains and what not, it's because they take all the money they get up front and waste it away. Many musicians and athletes do not have any financial sense - they get a big paycheck, they spend it, that's why most of them are generally broke in a couple years (if not months) if they are a one-hit wonder. That is, unless they were a super one-hit wonder and can ride the fame all the way.

[JRA219psu @ Dec 4th 2006 3:11PM]

This doesn't surprise me in the least. The ones in power get to live above the law...if you ask me the kids should all be in jail. Every stinking last one of them. Sure, they can take us college kids to the cleaners but when it's their own kids, well, I guess the rules no longer apply.

P.S. to Mr. Warner Music CEO: I hope you burn for all eternity in hell for what you're doing to the music industry. This is unrelated but getting a share of ipod and zune sales...where the f*(! do you get off? Not to worry though your days of fascist like rule over the music industry are coming to a close.

[Amphetameme @ Dec 4th 2006 3:24PM]

I'm actually inclined to think that anyone can now fight the RIAA by saying if the RIAA's own members can't fight piracy and openly have it occuring in their own homes, how can the RIAA enforce or even remotely enforce lawsuits against others external to the RIAA?

;d

[mmmgood @ Dec 4th 2006 7:52PM]

Edgar Bronfman Jr is widely regarded as an idiot. He bought his way into the entertainment industry by selling off his family business (Seagram's) and has lost boatloads of money in the process.
Wikipedia has a bio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Bronfman%2C_Jr.

[B. Downey @ Dec 4th 2006 10:24PM]

I'm pretty sure it is illegal to discriminate in who a corporation sues over a claim. If they sue one person for doing it, they have to sue them all, otherwise, you can't sue any. Obviously, this is excessively generalized, but someone should really push this. If anything, at least piss this dude off and make the RIAA apply its rules more fairly (or not at all).

One definite bright point in all these lawsuits...there was the recent decision by one judge that each stolen song in one case was worth 70 cents not $700, so the RIAA couldn't go nuts with their life-sucking-out-of-line-claims.

Also, quit being douches, more people are likely to buy cd's if you weren't the senile asshole on the corner who is worried you are going to walk on their lawn...

[MacGyver @ Dec 5th 2006 1:18AM]

Musicians can play music live to make money. We all only wish we could record ourselves at work once, and expect to get paid forever afterwards. IP is NOT worth as much as real property, real objects require real resources to create. You could say that music does too, ok, let's make it apply to the same pricing method as real products, say it costs $50,000 to produce and record the music, now there are 150 million people that could listen to it, but only %10 will buy it, so let's take our ($50,000) divided by the total objects to sell (15 million), add in the cost to make each CD (.07cents) plus the standard profit of %200 percent, we get; almost a penny per unit to get back our investment of $50,000. Now the RIAA will say "what about the advertising?", ok add another 2 million to the cost of the album, (((2mil+50thou)/15mil)+.07cents)*2); damn, look at the price jump to 40 cents an album. That's $6,000,000 total in sales, at 40cents an album, it's no wonder they sell the album for $15 dollars, their profit goes from $6,000,000 to $225,000,000 if that artist sells 15 million copies. That's one artist, and one album.
STOP DEFENDING THE RECORD EXECUTIVES!
They are all a bunch of pimps, and they know it, just look at their little "work-for-hire" law they tried to get passed. �I don�t mean pimp in the pseudo-cool Snoop Dogg way, I mean it in a �beating women and taking 90% of their money, killing them if they try to leave them, way�
You show me a recording executive working 60 hours a week, driving a 97 Civic, and eating Mac-N-Cheese 3 nights a week, and I'll buy another CD, until then, they can all screw themselves.

http://www.ascap.com/legislation/workforhire.html

[Sam Frankss @ Dec 5th 2006 5:34AM]

This is news to him ?
Welcome to the real world.
www.vintagecomputermanuals.com

[dave @ Dec 5th 2006 7:42PM]

I'm fairly certain that they've suffered the consequences...

"You're grounded! You can't use the private jet FOR A WEEK!"

[Ashley @ Dec 11th 2006 11:07AM]

oops sorry on those typos.

[Ashley @ Dec 14th 2006 9:51AM]

From my own personal research. People are wasting their money on "leagal downloads" They don't own the music. Itunes can delete it tomorrow if the felt like it. If people would stoo to read the shady licence agreement before hitting i accept and throwing there dollars down the drain. Your music isn't an asset. If you buy the Cd you are still putting money back into the pockets of the RIAA. I say at lease pay the money and know that u own the CD, and make the bastards pay for packaging! The ideal solution is to cut the middle man out entirely and buy the CD or didgital download directly from the artist. Bam! The only thing a major label can provide that and indie one can't is massive dollars for promotion, and by promotion i mean pay for play radio. Distibution can now be performed online by the artist themselves. So it's foolish to keep cranking money into the RIAA's pockets and giving them control over your music library. If I like an Artist such as Gavin Castleton I will either buy the Cd directly from him or his own personal distibutor (cdbaby.com). For me it's that simple.

[FuzzMop @ Feb 16th 2007 4:28PM]

"Nowadays every square inch could contain someones lifework ten times, like on a USB-stick."

If you can fit someone's life work on a USB-stick and multiply it ten times, then obviously they haven't done very much work.

"How can you justify downloading somebody else's intellectual property without compensating them in teh way they choose"

How can you justify having to pay $740 for a pirated music file if its original worth was $0.99?

How can you justify the artists already making millions, but continuing to make us pay for their music?

How can you justify that the RIAA making people poor because of a song they took illegally? Just because someone does something illegally doesn't mean they should be penalized to the point that they can't live anymore. A song may have been someone's hard work, but the recording companies are going to have to do A LOT better if they don't want people taking their music. If they don't want to spend money doing research to find a way to make music usable only once, then obviously they don't care about the fact that a percentage of the money they don't make is because of pirating.

Oh, and I'm not talking about that stupid DRM crap. DRM sucks, because there are more than just one music format... Someone could easily convert a Windows Media file to an MP3 or other format that didn't have DRM.

If they can't handle that factor, then they shouldn't be a record company.

I think copyrights were made so someone couldn't make profit off of a product someone made, not so people could listen to music.

Oh! I know! We can take off "cut", "copy", and "paste" from our computers! Then we can remove internet access so people can't get on the internet to download music illegally!

[Lawsuit @ May 25th 2007 5:19PM]

Cue Sony vs Bronfman in 3....2....