Nicolas Sarkozy Sued over MGMT’s Kids
MGMT are taking President of France Nicolas Sarkozy to court – because Sarkozy has been using their hit “Kids” in online videos without paying enough for the rights.
Sarkozy admits to using the song at the UMP party’s national congress, but, oops, he says, doing it without permission was totally a mistake. And because it was a mistake, he offered the band one Euro for compensation (according to BBC News).
Understandable, MGMT did not take the French Prez up on his ever-so-generous offer. The lawyer for the band, Isabelle Wekstein, said, “This offer is disrespectful of the rights of artists and authors. It is insulting. We are dealing with acts of counterfeiting, an infringement of intellectual property.”
Her take on the matter seems pretty accurate if you ask me.
A fee of 53 Euros (which is about $90 these days) was paid for the initial use of the song, but Wekstein this amount did not cover the repeated use of the song as featured in the online videos.
MGMT could probably do themselves some good by suing the President. It would bring a lot of exposure in France, even at the expense of the legal fees, as recently the youth population has been staging up-risings against the government.
Dont no wat it is bt he seems rly pompus!
53 Euros is actually $68. Not 90. And GO MGMT! If the French president were so concerned about copyright infringement and trying to pass the anti-filesharing bill that parliament is trying to pass, you would think that he would make an effort to make sure that HE was not subsequently violating copyright laws himself. Makes you wonder…
MGMT CAN GO TO HELL !!! THEY SHOULD BE THE ONES THAT SHOULD BE SUED.. I DONT CARE ABOUT PRESIDENT OF FRANCE EITHER BUT MGMT I AM TOTALLY DISGUSTED WITH WHAT I SAW AND HOW THEY ALLOWED THE VIDEO FOR KIDS TO BE SENT OUT AS IS .. ITS MOST DISTURBING AND THE KID INSIDE THE VID IS DEFINETLY TRAUMATISED .. SO WHY NOT SUE MGMT AS WELL AS THE DIRECTOR OF THE MUSIC VID.. FOR ALLOWING SUCH FILTH .. YOU AS A ARTIST SHOULD’NT GO FOR WHAT DIRECTOR IS HIP AND HAPPENING BUT HAS NO MORALS.. Usually for a kid that young, they keep the monster in a seperate filmed framed, then edit footage of the kid crying, shot seperately, so in real life the toddler actor never actually sees anything traumatic.
I have a real issue with how this video was filmed, and how that poor kid was treated as a result. .. YOU CAN SEE THE FEAR ON THE CHILD’S FACE ..ITS SO WRONG … AS FOR THE MOTHER WHO GAVE CONSENT FOR ALLOWING THE VID TO GO OUT AS IS .. IMAGINE WHAT THAT CHILD IS GONNA THINK OF YOU WHEN HE IS OLDER AND SEES THE VID .. BECAUSE BELIEVE ME .. THE VID IS OUT THERE AND HE IS GONNA SEE IT… SO MUCH FOR A SONG FOR THE KIDS …