Pirated plugins in commercial or public songs?

[akira]

Hi everybody...
I'm just curious, if people who use pirated plugins in commercial songs have been sentenced...
and what penalty they have to expect.

A while ago I read probably in the gearslutz forum, that these people usually have to buy the plugin and that's it ?!

[recursive one]

Ask Avicii

[thecontrolcentre]

Why only those who release commercial tracks?

[BITWORD]

I they should loose the rights to their music and the product should benefit the developers that were ripped off from the start (and help fund future anti-piracy efforts). Of course this could be only enforced in a limited manner and the gains for the developers would be less when it is an unknown musician. Sounds draconian? Maybe it is... but there has to be a real penalty when doing these things... as much as people try to justify the piracy scene, it's simply walking into an open door and doing as you please in the structure. Nobody needs to walk into an open door just because it is unlocked.... they just do... it's very troublesome when you look at it as a social disorder.

[aciddose]

The penalty is DEATH by flaying 1" sq sections of flesh then being dipped in a bath of hot acid, starting with the scrotum. For every member of your extended family including three generations up (great grandfather). Unfortunately such a punishment is at best entirely unreasonable as it truly lacks sufficiency.

Meanwhile in civilized countries this is a small claims issue where you could be held liable up to *gasp* the price of the software license or other such damages for which evidence can be presented so as to convince a judge. However it is likely that such a case would be held up near indefinitely due to jurisdictional/standing issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_claims_court
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_%28law%29

[Daags]

In an ideal world - I guess besides the cost of the license, and legal fees, perhaps there should be a punitive fine too. But imo this should be relative to the cost of the license, not the revenue/success of the song.

[aciddose]

The hard part is simply to demonstrate standing. It is impossible to prove an unlicensed version of software was used in a production, let alone that this would entitle the owner of the rights to any award to begin with.

For example you can't sue people for having heard your music on youtube. Although you can have them flayed and dipped in hot acid, this is outside jurisdiction of the law "officially" and so must be accomplished via "other" means.

[Aloysius]

... starting with the scrotum...

I hope there are no feminists on this forum. Every person has an equal right to torture.

[aciddose]

*scrotum

(*1: Or equivalent.)

[BITWORD]

Someone was taking my demo tracks and passing them off as their tracks - LOL

THAT = u|tr@ l4m3

[deastman]

I'm not exactly sure of the actual punishment, but I believe it involves a cheese grater.

[Sendy]

I'm not exactly sure of the actual punishment, but I believe it involves a cheese grater.

And an unsmiling woman in a black PVC outfit who's REALLY passionate about copyright law.

[scintillator]

The hard part is simply to demonstrate standing. It is impossible to prove an unlicensed version of software was used in a production, let alone that this would entitle the owner of the rights to any award to begin with.

Ask Tone2.

[funky lime]

I read a storyabout how Jimi Hendrix basically strong-armed a guy into giving him a guitar that he liked, the Black Widow, from a guy who worked at Acoustic.

I answered all his amp questions, and said, "I gotta go. Can I have my guitar back?" He says, "My guitar." I say, "No, that's my guitar." He starts laughing and says, "Not anymore! Now it's my guitar!" I say, "Hey look, I'm not a salesman. I play in a band, Sweetwater. What am I gonna use?" He points at the floor where four of his white Strats are laid out and says, "Help yourself!"

So basically, if people think you're awesome, you can pretty much do whatever you want and it's fine, even if that means touring with a guitar that was effectively "stolen." (somewhere in HPC, an affluenza thread is waiting to be born). Even the guy whose guitar was taken didn't seem to mind all that much, even though he supposedly thought Jimi's strat was a piece of crap.

If some huge, internationally famous artist stole your plugin, you'd probably make up for that one "lost sale" by getting worldwide recognition that may not have happened otherwise. So now every wannabe is gonna check out your plugin. You get worldwide publicity and advertising, and all it cost you was one illegal download of your product (for which you didn't even foot the bandwidth bill anyway).

Of course, whether or not the wannabes pay for it is a different story. I know of a guy who puts his own music (which isn't free) up on torrent sites just for the publicity, appealing to the logic that "hey if people are pirating it, it must be decent."

[aciddose]

The hard part is simply to demonstrate standing. It is impossible to prove an unlicensed version of software was used in a production, let alone that this would entitle the owner of the rights to any award to begin with.

Ask Tone2.

I don't need to ask them since they might be 100% full of shit. (No reason exists to believe otherwise.)

You'd need court documents showing that they've made a case using their watermarking. Watermarking is reasonably trivial. The process is called steganography and is reasonably commonplace. I use it myself.

Even so, the statement I made applies. The hard part is simply to demonstrate standing.

1. It is impossible to prove an unlicensed version of software was used in a production,
2. let alone that this would entitle the owner of the rights to any award to begin with.

I'm not aware of a single case in which steganography has been used to establish standing with regard to audio software or recordings. Such a thing would be quite major and I'd be a bit surprised if it existed without my knowledge.

There are existing cases in which caselaw has been established in various jurisdictions using a set of subjective test criterion. Due to that there is little reason to believe that steganography would be of any benefit to anyone. The existing caselaw to my knowledge may in fact override any attempt to establish standing via steganography. You may be able to make the attempt in an appeal if you were unable to establish standing via existing criterion, although this is dependent upon all sorts of factors for which you'd pay a specialist in this area of law a hefty fee.

If you were to ask anyone I'd recommend asking your lawyer who has experience in such cases and can point you to public records for citation. I can't provide you with any proof that no such thing exists, that isn't how proof works. It may very well exist although I'm unaware of it.