Pink Floyd take on EMI at the High Court over download royalties

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Pink Floyd, who once sang Keep your hands off my smoke-stack in their strike Money, from the manuscript The Dark Side of the Moon, took on their jot down tag in the High Court yesterday in a brawl over royalties for downloads of their music.

Members of the band, one of EMIs majority successful given they sealed in 1967, hold they have been underpaid and that the association should have asked accede to sell songs individually, rather than as finish albums.

Discussions took place yesterday in sealed court, but millions of pounds could be at stake. The flourishing members of Pink Floyd are between the richest musicians in Britain. Roger Waters, who co-founded the rope with Syd Barrett, Richard Wright and Nick Mason, has a happening estimated at 85 million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List.

The brawl centres on a stipulate proviso that says there are no rights to sell any or all of the annals as singular annals alternative than with [Pink Floyds] permission. The rope claims that this relates to their songs in all formats, together with those sole online. EMI says it relates usually to earthy copies.

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Robert Howe, QC, for the band, told the justice that talks began on the stipulate in 1998, 6 years prior to the download marketplace took off when Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store in Britain in 2004.

At that theatre both parties were faced with a total new universe of intensity exploitation of music, and utterly simply they didnt know how that would work out, he said.

He pronounced the rope longed for their song sole as albums for artistic, as well as blurb reasons.

It is well well known that Pink Floyd albums form seamless pieces. They instruct to keep inventive control, ensuring exploitation of albums, not singles.

Elizabeth Jones, QC, for EMI, pronounced that it was transparent from the stipulate as a total that the word jot down practical usually to tangible discs and did not request to downloads.

EMI has had stretched family with a little of the artists given it was paid for in 2007 by Terra Firma, a in isolation equity group. The Rolling Stones, Sir Paul McCartney and Radiohead have all give up the tag given Terra Firma took over.

The association additionally captivated debate last month when it reportedly voiced a instruct to sell Abbey Road, the studios done important by The Beatles.

A visualisation in the box is approaching on Thursday morning.

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