Spanish Copyright Society Raided For Embezzlement 80
esocid writes "Senior officials in Spain's Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE), the country's leading collection society for songwriters and composers, face embezzlement charges in the wake of a Friday raid on the organization's offices. Investigators say Jose Luis Rodriguez Neri, the head of an SGAE subsidiary called the Digital Society of Spanish Authors (SDAE), made payments for non-existent services to a contractor that then paid kickbacks to Neri and his associates. SGAE, the Spanish counterpart to American collecting societies like ASCAP and BMI, is known for its high fees and aggressive enforcement tactics. According to El País, 'the society has been often accused of exceeding its remit by going as far as to infiltrate private weddings to check whether fees had been paid for the music being played at the banquet.'"
Re:Not surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you actually know anything about Spain?, because that statement makes no sense.
They've been relying heavily on American investment and northern European (little American) tourism since Franco, like all new conservatives, discovered trickle-up enonomics. This is built on the classical Catholic Spain of a few wealthy business-families enjoying special relations with the powers that be. So, I guess you could say that America imitated Spain, did a very good job of it, and then sold its success back to Spain.
Beyond the obvious (Eating better, living longer, having clearly different political, institutional, educational and health systems).
This is merely legacy. The direction is to the Amerian system. The EU is fundamentally a corporation of corporations in the American style designed to force its members to transfer state/national control to "free competition" amongst private companies. (These freely selected companies tend predictably often to be the same French or German behemoths.) And Spain's official line is that it loves the EU and should swallow its bait along with hook, line and sinker.
Spain's message against Piracy is not "don't steal or else", but rather "protect your culture".
Please justify. Spain is full of self-hate about its recent past while its youth are one of the most alienated in Western Europe. There's a lot of "protect the middle-age who have ridden the first wave of prosperity which ended about 5 years ago", but culture? Nah, fuck culture, everyone in that group was too busy buying second homes until the bottom fell out of the economy.
the justice system over there can actually do something about it.
Coming from a common law nation, I am quite scared by the thought of any justice system which consists entirely of a panel of professional judges. However, I acknowledge that Spain's judiciary has remained more impartial than I would have expected over the past half-century - it's not that the very well-connected won't always get off; it's more that fascist fetish for correct bureaucratic process hasn't been pierced. In Britain, law at this level is little more than ex-public school lawyer buddies having a well-paid debating competition while the jury is hoodwinked and the judge grins on.
Re:They didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisitio (Score:4, Interesting)
You aren't from Spain, are you?
Even if it's proved that the used the royalties money to enrichen their consulting companies, I will not bet on they entering prison.
At least with politicians it is always more complicated than that.