RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

MISCELLANEA

Svetolik Jakovljevič

SOUND THIEVES

”Today, France has six million active sound thieves. They are the owners of tape or cassette recorders.” This is how the Franch weekly Le nouvel observateur humourously begins a serious article in one of its issues on a new development in music distribution that is disquieting record producers, concert organizers and musicians, who feel they аге being hurt in various ways. It identifies three categories of pirates: Amateur pirates operate at home or at friends’, and solely for their own personal benefit Radios and cassette recorders are the most common weapons in the crime, for there is nothing easier than recording a concert on the air. And they are abetted by the manufacturers of sound reproduction equipment who think of everything and fit the radios and tuners with every necessary recording outlet This does away with the need for microphones and gives a technically very decent recording Recordings can be made from records and cassettes borrowed from friends. A blank cassette is used for this, which is half the price of a pre-recorded cassette. What has the French society of authors, composers and music publishers (S.A.C.E.M) to say about this? ”At one time family gatherings were recorded, the child’s first сгу. Now, in 88% of cases, artistic productions and most often popular music is recorded, and of this two-thirds from records and cassettes and a third from radio programmes. Music cornposers in France lose 37 miiion francs a уеаг this way through piracy. We are demanding compensation on the basis

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