On Wednesday 12 April
2000 we got an email from "Solicitor, Business Affairs,
BMG Australia Limited" (http://www.bertelsmann.com/).
It read "We have recently visited your site
(www.johnfarnhamfan.com.au) and were surprised to find a number of our sound
recordings embodied on the site". We were told to remove all sound
recordings owned by BMG Australia Limited from our website by 5pm Monday 17
April 2000.
We corrected "Solicitor" and said that our URL was in fact www.johnfarnham.com as we do not have a webpage located at www.johnfarnhamfan.com.au
"Solicitor" wrote: "For future reference, please note that you are not permitted to include any BMG owned sound recordings on your website without the written permission of BMG Australia Limited, who in their absolute discretion, may consider the grant of a licence to include up to 30 seconds of a sound recording in a non-downloadable format."
In our reply we
requested BMG Australia Limited consider granting us license to have BMG
Australia Limited owned sound recordings on our page: "I would like to
be able to offer my visitors the ability to listen to small portions of John
Farnham's music which may then encourage them to purchase
John Farnham's CD's". We were issued with an instant denial: "At
this stage, BMG is not in a position to grant you the rights to include BMG
owned sound recordings ..."
"Solicitor" wrote in the 2nd email: "You are also hereby notified that you do not have permission to include album / single artwork covers on your site".
We are very sorry about having to take our sound recordings and artwork covers off our webpage (especially after they had already been online for the past 6 months). We have searched the internet for John Farnham sound recordings (owned by BMG Australia Limited) and have found Shaz's page. A link to her sound recordings has been added to our multimedia page, and you can listen to John's music as long as they are there.