Vietnam: You mean music isn’t free?
November 12, 08 by Mr.Q
Reportedly, copyright watchdog Recording Association of Vietnam (RIAV) has filed a $3 million lawsuit against FPT Telecom and Nokia Vietnam for violating intellectual property rights. I know, I know. Who would have thought that such a group existed right? Since copyright law is virtually nonexistent in Vietnam. Appearently, RIAV, which was founded in 2003, represents 60 music production companies throughout Vietnam, is suing both companies over allegations of copyright infringement for using 10,446 songs of RIAV’s members commercially without permission.
Earlier this month, RIAV said that it was going to initiate a lawsuit against FPT Telecom for sharing recorded music over the internet via its website, Nhac So, and using copyrighted materials on FPT Telecom’s internet television service, IPTV. After a failed attempt for a settlement between the two companies, RIAV also filed a suit against Nokia Vietnam for allowing its customers to download 1,000 copyrighted songs from a 10,466 song database through Nhac So.
According to Nokia, FPT admitted that it may not have the necessary rights for all of the music content on their website even though FPT Online had previously confirmed to Nokia that they had the legal rights for the complete music content on their website, and place the blame squarely on FPT.
So, why is Nokia dealing with FPT in the first place? Because RIAV do not own most of the music copyright. In fact, artists own it directly, and NhacSo (FPT) have signed many contract with those artists. So NhacSo have full legal right to distribute most but not all the music.
On related news, other music producers, namely HT Production and Kim Loi Studio, have also jointly sued multimedia company VTC Intercom for selling copyrighted music to mobile phone service provider Viettel Mobile through the service of I-muzik, which provide ringtones to subscripers.