Money, money, money, money,...

Yesterday I read in the news that the SGAE (the institution taking care of the copyright of music and cinema in Spain, www.sgae.es) has claimed its 10% share of an aid concert where David Bisbal, one of the most famous Spanish singers, sang for free. The aim of that concert was collecting funds for the investigation of a rare disease that a boy in Andalucía suffers. As you can read it is one of the most honourable goals of a concert and, certainly, the collaboration of David Bisbal is really remarkable. But we always need a villain in life and here we find the SGAE, which did not care at all about the purpose of the concert and just asked the boy's parents for their piece of the cake. All story short, some cockroach have been reported to have more dignity than the SGAE.

But it is not the first time the SGAE describes itself with its behaviour. In Spain we must pay a small fee to them every time a blank CD, a mobile phone or a printer is bought, just in case we use them to illegaly copy films or songs. In this case, every citizen is judged guilty beforehand, without presumption of innocence.

Besides, it was reported in some newspapers some months ago that they usually infiltrate people in weddings and similar celebrations, just to check that the copyright of the songs played in the party is paid to them. I do not know how to define this from an ethical point of view.

The SGAE gets a lot of money from these practices, which are quite greedy in my point of view. The SGAE representatives give always the impression of being "lefties", who are close to the normal people and who do not care much about money. They organised demonstrations against the war in Iraq and, generally speaking, agains the conservative government of José María Aznar. It seems that now that the socialists are in the government, they are getting their plunder for that (just ask the new Ministry of Culture). Everybody in Spain thinks that the SGAE only thinks about getting its fees paid.