Interesting court case in France this week involving the French division of Virgin Megastore (which may or may not be part of the Virgin Group, I can't quite work it out) and Madonna's single 'Hung Up'.
This court case basically relates to the growing frustration among the traditional music retailers regarding the exclusivity deals record companies have been doing with non-traditional music sellers (you'll remember HMV in Canada has staged boycotts of certain artists who have done exclusivity deals with other retailers or, in a number of cases, Starbucks). Warner Music did an exclusive deal with French tel cos France Telecom and Orange making 'Hung Up' exclusively available via the phone companies' digital music services a week ahead of everywhere else. Rather than boycotting Madonna's back catalogue, Virginmega France decided to download the track off the France Telecom platform, hack the DRM they had put on it, re-encode it with their DRM, and made it available to buy via their download store! I think the phrase is "a bit cheeky". Or, in the words of France Telecom's Herve Payan, "an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company".
Warner and the phone firms sued Virginmega France, and this week the Paris courts found the retailer guilty of "ignoring an exclusive deal by Warner Music France with France Telecom and Orange", and ordered them to pay 250,000 euros compensation to each phone firm, and 100,000 euros to Warner.
Welcoming the ruling, Payan told the International Herald Tribune: "This is an amazing case ... Virgin behaved in a surreal manner by downloading the song, cracking protection measures and then selling it from their own website".
But Virginmega maintain they were acting in the interest of the consumer. The Tribune quotes store director Laurent Fiscal as saying: "We have always been ahead of the others posing questions that look to the interests of consumers. We are precursors in the question of exclusive sales and think a debate should take place between sales platforms and producers."