Piracy? Virgin Megastores in France Fined

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

In what I originally labeled “hilarious” and “ironic”, the Virgin chain of stores in France has been fined for illegal downloading and selling of a Madonna song, “Hung Up.”

The store’s online portal, virginmega.fr, was ordered by the Paris Tribunal de Commerce to pay 600,000 euros, or $754,000, in damages for downloading the Madonna song “Hung Up” from a France Télécom Web site that had exclusive rights to distribute the song for one week.

“This is an amazing case of simple piracy by a respected company,” Hervé Payan, senior vice president for content partnership and service at France Télécom, said Tuesday. “Virgin behaved in a surreal manner by downloading the song, cracking protection measures and then selling it from their own Web site.” Source: Newsfactor

We Say: Why do I say I originally labeled it “x”? Because originally I thought it was a simple mistake, but since the story clearly states they cracked the DRM … Then I thought about the flap between France and Apple over the iTunes DRM. Although the proposed law has essentially been neutered, it was brought up by Laurent Fiscal, a director of the store.