acroyear | Fripp on EMI and standard contracts

Robert Fripp's Diary for Thursday, 23rd October 2008:

The second-tier lawyer we are dealing with at EMI is the same man who came to DGM HQ in 2003, when we were considering re-licensing the KC/RF catalogue to EMI for a further term of years: this was our preferred option. However, EMI’s second-tier lawyer explained to us although downloads weren’t important, it was EMI standard policy to have download rights - even though download rights were not importantI Our reply, that as download rights are not important, we’ll keep them, had a logic that did not seem to persuade him. And as the terms for payment on downloads were not then established in the industry, it was a question of – give us the download rights that are not important and we’ll figure out what we pay you for them later!

This was not a proposition that convinced us, so we declined to grant the unimportant downloading rights & all other releasing rights in the KC catalogue 1969-2000, which reverted to DGM. This did not, however, prevent EMI from continuing to release the catalogue nor from putting up material for download. A little rich, perhaps, given how the majors prosecute little guys that fileshare?