Bredonborough WillyFred remained in the
12.56
Bredonborough.
WillyFred remained in the bedroom all night, keen to play.
A bright, cold morning.
Morning reading…
Shopping on the High Street with the Minx…
16.06 Leaving c. 13.10 for Andrew Leask at the
Guildhall Practice in Kings Heath…
… around the corner from the Willcox Family Home, to address my painful left arm.
Back to preparing for tomorrow.
16.51 Dealing with arising disputations in various areas…
18.11 …and one of these is Universal. Declan Panegyric has written to a Power Possessor at UMG…
Dear Mr. Power Possessor,
I write to draw your attention to the fact that UMG (in the USA) currently offers a King Crimson track via streaming websites such as Mog, Spotify, Rhapsody, Mog and, no doubt, several others, without any rights or permission to do so. UMG’s rights in the album from which the track is taken, the OST of the film "Children of Men", extend to full physical album sales or full album downloads only - No streaming, no individual track downloads or other forms of sale are contractually agreed or permitted under the terms of the license granted.
The track is: "The Court of the Crimson King" (edit) by King Crimson.
This is not the first time I have had to complain about this issue. It has extended into areas (Spotify US) which didn’t exist at the time of previous complaints only because of UMG’s inadequate response to the problem when previously raised.
I have complained to both UMG USA and UMG UK about this, without resolution.
Should you be unable to effect an urgent takedown of the above and other instances of current availability on streaming sites, I will ask Douglas Kassem at Grayzone (copied) to issue takedown notices on behalf of Robert Fripp (copyright owner) and my company (licensee) to all major digital services. Any expenses accrued in such an exercise will be recharged to UMG.
This is the 40th official complaint I have registered with UMG about copyright infringement of King Crimson material since 2006.
Many of the complaints were registered with senior legal officers of the company, several copied to CEO’s Lucian Grainge and David Joseph.
Many of the complaints were rejected as somehow imaginary or impossible by UMG lawyers Tim Smith, Clive Fisher and external lawyer Brian Howard.
Yet, we now know, after thousands of CD albums, tens of thousands of digital downloads and hundreds of thousands of streams/ "tethered downloads" sold by UMG without any rights to do so, that each and every single complaint was legitimate.
If anything the instances complained of severely understated the extent of the problem.
UMG’s systems - albeit belatedly and incompletely in many areas - acknowledge this.
Even such acknowledgements as have been made of the raw facts of the sales cannot begin to address the damage done to the catalogue or the time wasted by us in pursuit of UMG’s infringements, such pursuit necessitated by the systemic failure to stop copyright infringements made by staff at the world’s largest record company.
We also know that the copyright infringements continue and the probability remains that the examples at the top of the page are by no means the only instances of current copyright infringement by UMG.
These issues need to be fully addressed and resolved.
They cannot be resolved until such time as UMG ceases to infringe King Crimson copyrights.
The infringements must stop now, with systems put in place to prevent any further instances via UMG or its licensees.
Legal fees accrued as a result of UMG’s continued infringements, the majority built up since UMG’s initial assurances that such infringements could never happen again in 2009, need to be paid by UMG.
Full, accurate, commensurate accounting for all elements of UMG’s infringements of King Crimson copyrights (taking into account the payment previously made by UMG in 2009) must be agreed and made.
Any associated Robert Fripp copyrights as claimed by UMG must be returned to his control. I believe this was already accepted by your predecessor in the case of the Summers/Fripp copyrights.
UMG must apologise for its acknowledged, serial, infringements of King Crimson copyrights.
There is nothing unreasonable in these requests, given the flagrant nature of the infringements.
Just as a number of issues relating to the unlicensed use of a King Crimson sample in the Kanye West recording "Power", were resolved in a single meeting held with you, David Singleton, George Babbington and me in attendance in 2010, I see no reason why similar progress could not be made on these issues, assuming you are willing to address them comprehensively, in a similar scenario.
Should you prefer to discuss this ’lawyer to lawyer’ with George Babbington, please feel free to do so.
For the present moment, immediate action to effect takedown of the infringing offerings detailed above is required.
Please confirm your proposed actions in this regard, to me, by return.
18.07 Well. What a festering mess.
To practicing.
21.55 Extrapolations and developing variations of the First Primary Exercise. Taken together with the First Secondary Exercise, this is becoming a significant approach in developing digital equality in the left hand: GC-speak for a foundational part of the guitaring calisthenic. As a young player, I practiced Ivor Mairants Daily Exercises (and other standard manuals), but there was something missing from the conventional approach of practicing scales: it didn’t prepare me to play the music that was yet to be played.
