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Kat Benzova sues GNR/Fernando for copyright infringement and sexual harassment


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On 11/14/2023 at 10:27 PM, IzzysMissy said:

The no contracts/freelancer thing is VERY MUCH an American thing to avoid giving get benefits. Spot on comment though… she’d never throw these  accusations out without proof, and lawyers would be hesitant to take this on considering it’s such a huge band. Well, good lawyers at least… as someone said earlier, here we thought it would all be boring post tour.. nope, Fernando had to go ahead and fuck with the legacy.

How do you really prove it though? How do you disprove it happened. Other than the credits thing, it's he said/she said.

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7 minutes ago, adamsapple said:

I don't mean this as an insult, but you have no idea how licensing works. By your logic you can go to a show and record a band to put out a bootleg you then make money off (getting paid by YouTube or streaming services, selling physical copies etc.) because with buying a ticket you already paid the band to play the music for you and now you own the music and can do whatever you want with it, right? Wrong! You paid for two hours of their service. If you want to put that service to further commercial use you might have to speak to the band management (no pun intended) and ask for licensing. This is how it works.

 

I don't know about about United States law, but at least in my country and many others, the general rule is that copyright belongs to the principal (the one who pays for the services) unless the parties stipulate otherwise....

For example, if I pay someone to take pictures of my marriage, I have the copyright of those pictures, not the photographer, unless stipulated otherwise in a contract.

I made a quick search and it seems that in USA, if a work is created by an employee in the course of his or her employment, the employer owns the copyright.

So no, it may not be as simple as you say and you definitely shouldn't be trying to teach other people about this topic lol

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5 minutes ago, adamsapple said:

I don't mean this as an insult, but you have no idea how licensing works. By your logic you can go to a show and record a band to put out a bootleg you then make money off (getting paid by YouTube or streaming services, selling physical copies etc.) because with buying a ticket you already paid the band to play the music for you and now you own the music and can do whatever you want with it, right? Wrong! You paid for two hours of their service. If you want to put that service to further commercial use you might have to speak to the band management (no pun intended) and ask for licensing. This is how it works.

 

Yeah. You better not, because you totally misrepresented what I said, so don't assume I know nothing about licensing, because you managed to come up with an idiotic (and false) comparison. Where did I say that? I bought entertainment from them. And that's it. No rights. No nothing. Technically I'm not even allowed to take pictures or videos. But GNR bought Benzova's service to produce photos for them (and of them) and thus should own the work, because they paid for it and they granted Benzova the right to take pictures. If I hire a plumber to deliver and install a toilet, the toilet also is mine and I don't have to pay the plumber whenever I let a guest take a dump and charge them for it.

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5 minutes ago, adamsapple said:

I don't mean this as an insult, but you have no idea how licensing works. By your logic you can go to a show and record a band to put out a bootleg you then make money off (getting paid by YouTube or streaming services, selling physical copies etc.) because with buying a ticket you already paid the band to play the music for you and now you own the music and can do whatever you want with it, right? Wrong! You paid for two hours of their service. If you want to put that service to further commercial use you might have to speak to the band management (no pun intended) and ask for licensing. This is how it works.

 

That is a bit skewed. We haven't paid for a private show, so we wouldn't be thinking we had the right to make money off bootlegs. That would be beyond silly. The band isn't working for us, we're just watching a show.

I am actually a freelancer myself (in Europe), and for the work I do for my clients, it is stipulated that they get the copyright too. I remember finding that really odd, as I would think it goes without saying that if someone pays me to do anything, and they buy my service, obviously they can do whatever they want with it afterwards, as it is theirs, since they paid for it. Maybe I'm too down to earth for all of that stuff. I see what Patrick means here.  BUT it still is completely ignorant and unprofessional to not have any contract in writing stipulating the terms of Kat's work for GNR. So regardless of that, I still think (if there are indeed no written contracts) Fernando is to blame. It was his responsability, at least after 2016. I wonder if before that, Kat was just happy to lead a dream life as a young European girl touring the world with a rock band, but as she got older, she realized she wanted more than that, and had nothing concrete to fall back to.

It was a bit funny Jarmo stressing that HE never travelled with the band or stayed in the band's hotels :lol:

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16 hours ago, MaskingApathy said:

That's how most big bands operate. In the US they use the buses to travel from city to city. I worked a ZZ Top show once (about 5 or 6 years ago) and Billy, Dusty, and Frank each had their own bus.

Yeah, old men needing their privacy all sobered up now lol, no more drinking and snorting on the bus together

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7 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

If we are to trust the lawsuit, she did speak up numerous times, trying to get Fernando and Team Brazil to change their ways and trying to communicate with the band as well. Obviously, she wasn't going to sue them while still working for them, so naturally that happened after she left the job.

And yet, there supposdly was sexual harrassment and her copyrights weren't honored and yet she willingly came back, year after year, after year, until they didn't ask her back. I would have way more respect for her story, if she would have left due to above reasons. The way it is, it's all fishy.

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Just now, PatrickS77 said:

And yet, there supposdly was sexual harrassment and her copyrights weren't honored and yet she willingly came back, year after year, after year, until they didn't ask her back. I would have way more respect for her story, if she would have left due to above reasons. The way it is, it's all fishy.

Why do you not think she left exactly because of the infringement and sexual harassment reasons?

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13 minutes ago, PatrickS77 said:

Didn't it say in the papers she wasn't asked back?

@Lioposted the relevant section.

I don't think it is exactly uncommon that people hang on in a job they don't like, especially if she thought the best way to sort out the infringement issue was while being employed, rather than after having left.

 

Edited by SoulMonster
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6 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

@Lioposted the relevant section.

So in your mind she should have sued them while still working for them and not after she had been terminated? I don't think it is exactly uncommon that people hang on in a job they don't like, especially if she thought the best way to sort out the infringement issue was while being employed, rather than after having left.

 

Yeah. That's what you do when you supposedly get sexually harassed and (in your mind) get professionally disrespected and maybe cheated out of money. You don't help your case and believability hanging on until you don't get paid anymore. Do you endure all that, especially the sexual harassment, just because you get paid? When you're supposedly freelancing and could look for work somewhere else.

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3 minutes ago, PatrickS77 said:

Yeah. That's what you do when you supposedly get sexually harassed and (in your mind) get professionally disrespected and maybe cheated out of money. You don't help your case and believability hanging on until you don't get paid anymore. Do you endure all that, especially the sexual harassment, just because you get paid? When you're supposedly freelancing and could look for work somewhere else.

I think there are plenty of actual cases of people enduring quite a bit in the work (and elsewhere), especially if they believe that's the best way to solve the issue, rather than going through a lawsuit after having left.

Besides, I believe the lawsuit exaggerates what she went through. Don't get me wrong, I believe she was harassed and she might have a case re: infringement, I just expect the lawsuit to make it look as bad as possible. 

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44 minutes ago, BreakDown2014 said:

I don't know about about United States law, but at least in my country and many others, the general rule is that copyright belongs to the principal (the one who pays for the services) unless the parties stipulate otherwise....

For example, if I pay someone to take pictures of my marriage, I have the copyright of those pictures, not the photographer, unless stipulated otherwise in a contract.

I made a quick search and it seems that in USA, if a work is created by an employee in the course of his or her employment, the employer owns the copyright.

So no, it may not be as simple as you say and you definitely shouldn't be trying to teach other people about this topic lol

 

Copyright applies to intellectual property, which can not be transmitted in any shape or form by the very nature of intellectual property.

Licensing applies to the use of an end product of intellectual property, i.e. a picture, a song, a poem etc.

Anyone who ever actually dealt with licensing of intellectual property will tell you the same.

People tend to mix up a "service" of say a plumber with the "art" of a photographer. Both are contractors, both provide a service of some sort. But it's not the same thing. You hire ten plumbers and get more or less the same result. You hire ten photographers and get ten entirely different results. Why? Because a photographer aside from the "service" of taking a picture also provides the "art" of intellectual property - which can not be replicated exactly the same way by anyone ever. It's unique.

 

 

Edited by adamsapple
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1 hour ago, BreakDown2014 said:

I don't know about about United States law, but at least in my country and many others, the general rule is that copyright belongs to the principal (the one who pays for the services) unless the parties stipulate otherwise....

For example, if I pay someone to take pictures of my marriage, I have the copyright of those pictures, not the photographer, unless stipulated otherwise in a contract.

I made a quick search and it seems that in USA, if a work is created by an employee in the course of his or her employment, the employer owns the copyright.

I think it's more complicated than that.

For example, in relation to music, if a musician/band that is signed with a record label writes some songs and the label pays them to record an album, the label owns the recordings (because they paid for them), but the musician owns the intellectual work (the songs/compositions themselves), unless the contract with the label says otherwise.

I suppose something similar applies to photographs. E.g. photographers who work for news agencies appear to share the copyright with them, meaning that someone has to obtain license and give credit to both the photographer and the news agency, and probably the photographers have some rights to exploit their work further (e.g. they can exhibit their photos or display them on their website, but not sell them to another news agency/media), unless their contract says otherwise. Then there are freelance photographers who have more control of their work.

In the case of Kat, it seems that her written contracts said that her photos belonged to GN'R. However, it also appears that she worked without a written contract most of the time. It is stated in her lawsuit that she doesn't claim copyright of the GN'R pictures she took during the periods she was under a written contract, only the ones she took when there was no contract. GN'R claims that since she agreed upon those stipulations by signing written contracts, it means that they also apply to the periods she worked under an "oral agreement" (because, I guess, "families don't need contracts" - ridiculous).

 

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1 hour ago, PatrickS77 said:

Obviously, she doesn't want fame. She wants money, as her moneytrain has come to a stop. Everything she did and got to do was because of GNR.

I agree her fame is because of GNR. Actually in an interview she said that Axl personally was interested in her work while she did a freelance job or something and then invited her to be the tour photographer.

But, I know you also agree that just because of the above mentioned, she shouldn't be subject to sexual harassment by the manager. She didn't sign up for that right?

Edited by ©GnrPersia
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5 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

I think there are plenty of actual cases of people enduring quite a bit in the work (and elsewhere), especially if they believe that's the best way to solve the issue, rather than going through a lawsuit after having left.

Besides, I believe the lawsuit exaggerates what she went through. Don't get me wrong, I believe she was harassed and she might have a case re: infringement, I just expect the lawsuit to make it look as bad as possible. 

Absolutely correct. Very well put.

Both cases, Kat's and the GNR counter case, will be polar opposites and will be extreme. The truth will be somewhere in the middle. 

Kat's opportunity to photograph one of the most successful bands in the world..arguably ever...isn't something to be passed up easily. It's the gig of a lifetime. I'd put up with a lot of shit too. But the moment you get binned and the realisation of all the crap you put up with hits you, and you're hugely out of pocket (both financially and in terms of copyright/credit), then yeah, I think I'd do exactly the same.

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4 minutes ago, ©GnrPersia said:

I agree her fame is because of GNR. Actually in an interview she said that Axl personally was interested in her work while she did a freelance job or something and then invited her to be the tour photographer.

But, I know you also agree that just because of the above mentioned, she shouldn't be subject to sexual harassment by the manager. She didn't sign up for that right?

Of course not, that's why I wonder, why she didn't leave? And as for the credits, without GNR, no one would know her and as Fernando supposedly said, everyone knows it's her who does the pics, maybe a bit more lenience to her discoverers would be/have been in order. Or to just cut ties and work for someone else, if both is unacceptable. Though I'd say sexual harassment worthy of a lawsuit would be more than reason to leave on that alone.

6 minutes ago, Skamos66 said:

"Fernandon't" is fucking hilarious 🤣

Is that what Kat said to him? ;)

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