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February 23, 2009

MGMT Compensated by French Political Party for Using Song Without Permission...

An interesting piece today on You Ain’t No Picasso finds that French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party used “Kids” by MGMT “at the time of two meetings and on the Internet” without permission. Instead of it just falling on deaf ears as it did all throughout the US
presidential campaign, the French government is actually doing the right thing.

Yahoo

“UMP is very attached to the respect of the royalties. And the protection of works of the artists is something of paramount”, underlined Mr. Bertrand. “Compensations had to be envisaged. This is completely normal. The music used in the meetings was it within the framework of the SACEM and thus by paying rights to the SACEM. We are looking at so that there is a right compensation for the group”, has it says. “We respect the right of the authors above all, for this reason we wish to manage an agreement”.

Previous comments include

#1 Fuzzgun says:

Well, it sounds like he's saying that the use was covered under licensing fees that the French gov't pays to SACEM, the French performing rights society. So the band may not see any cash from this.