Cannes, France — Here's something you don't see every day; a pirate site going legit without threat of court action.

At least Jonathan Benassaya, CEO of Deezer, didn't say it was legal fears that caused him to take his illegal pirate music site and take it legit, seeking out licenses from music rightsholders. Deezer is based in France, so the Grokster decision didn't reach him. I'm not sure how the French law works; I do know it's a nation that is sympathetic to rightsholders, and I know that on a MidemNet panel here Benassaya made no bones about the fact that his site originally was breaking the law.

So why go legit, particularly when he spent a good part of the time on the panel talking about how difficult it can be sometimes to obtain the licenses he'd like? He said he was looking at the music industry and the artists in it, and he said "I see that piracy is doing something really bad. I learned you cannot do it the dark way."

There has to be more to it than that, but I won't be the one to press him for more details. I'm just glad he recognized that songwriters and recording artists need to be compensated when their creative works are enjoyed. Kudos to Benassaya for doing the right thing. 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 7:12 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright law, market forces, piracy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.