Over the years the labels have made a habit of using songs from a wide variety of artists for compilation CDs without securing the rights. They simply use the recording and make note of it on “pending list” so they can deal with it later. This has been going on since the 1980s and since then the list of unpaid tracks (or copyright infringements) has grown to 300,000 in Canada alone.
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But before you do, take a moment to do the math. If the numbers listed in the article are true, then 300,000 tracks are worth 45,000,000. That comes to $150 per track. However, how many times were they burned and sold? Averaging even 3 times each would lower the value to $50. Some would argue this is what they had to pay in royalties, but that's not what happened. They were illegally distributing copies of copyrighted material with no right and making a profit from it. I believe we should all take a long look at this "compromise" and ask ourselves, if it was fair for private individuals to pay hundreds of thousands for a handful of songs, totally god-awful sums per song, when the people suing them have just gotten away with paying a per song penalty that's pretty much next to nothing for a large corporation.
