A court in Finland has ordered Universal Music Group to remove two 1970s albums from local rock band Hurriganes from online services, ruling that the artist’s historical contract does not cover modern digital usage.
Two sons of late Albert Järvinen, the guitarist in Hurriganes (pictured), won the case in Helsinki Market Court, which ruled that Universal was not entitled to make the recordings available to the public through the internet, as the rights were only granted with regard to physical phonograms.
The case was processed on behalf of the artist rightholders with legal aid provided by the Finnish Musicians’ Union.
Universal was unable to prove the existence of an agreement between the artist and the label allowing internet use. In addition, Universal could not convince the court of either a general business practice or a silent acceptance enabling them to use the recordings in internet services.
“This ruling makes it clear that the majors cannot unilaterally reinterpret their unfair contracts to make them even more unfair.”
Benoit Machuel, FIM
Benoît Machuel, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Musicians (FIM), suggested that the ruling could now have global implications for the major labels.
“We welcome this ruling, which makes clear that the record majors cannot unilaterally re-interpret their unfair contracts to make them even more unfair to performers,” he said. “The time has come to re-shape business models and legislations, in order to provide performers with a fair share of the revenue generated by their music online”.
The ruling obliges Universal to remove the first two Hurriganes albums from internet services, pending a fine of €50,000.
Ahti Vänttinen, the President of the Finnish Musicians’ Union, said: “We believe that a large part if not most of the older recorded repertoire from any country now utilised in internet music services worldwide is not sufficiently licensed by the artists.
“Labels cannot just assume they have the rights, but they have to agree on them with the artists. It is not credible to presume that record deals in the 1960’s, 1970’s or even 1980’s would have included provisions on internet use. Only in the late 1990’s we started to see provisions dealing with electronic distribution, and even today some contracts are still silent on these types of utilization.”
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