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Virgin France fined for music piracy

Monday, 03 July 2006

Virgin France fined for music piracy

The French music retailer Virgin France, owned by Lagardere, has been fined 600,000 euros ($754,266; £414,147) for music piracy in which it had illegally downloaded Madonna's Hung Up to resell from the company's website.

An industrial court found Virgin France unit Virginmega had ignored an exclusive deal reached by Warner Music France with France Telecom and Orange, and under the ruling, Virginmega was ordered to pay 250,000 euros to each telecom firm and 100,000 euros to Warner.

Warner welcomed the outcome of the case, and said it had succeeded in protecting its rights and those of its artists.

France Telecom's Herve Payan told the International Herald Tribune: "This is an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company.

"Virgin behaved in a surreal manner by downloading the song, cracking protection measures and then selling it from their own web site."

Virgin France, however, defended its action and said it had broken the exclusive agreement in the interest of consumers.

The judgement "confirmed the need to do everything to help build a balanced market for legal downloads", Virgin France explained.

The company, and the French retailer Fnac, have recently condemned record firms for releasing top selling singles to mobile and Internet firms under exclusive contracts.

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