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Rogue Geordie jukebox men sentenced
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 12 July 2010
Record label trade body the BPI and collecting society PPL last week welcomed the custodial sentences dished out to the three men who ran that previously reported jukebox racket in the North East.
As previously reported, Malcolm Wylie, his son Peter Wylie (not the Mighty Wah frontman) and William Ross, were arrested in 2008 for their role in running an unlicensed jukebox company operating in the Newcastle area called Access All Areas. For seven years the three men implied to their clients that they ran a legit jukebox service, but they pocketed over half of million in revenues that should have gone to PPL and onto the owners of the sound recordings being played.
They were found guilty of copyright crimes in March and sentenced for those crimes last week. Malcolm Wylie got three years and was banned from being a company director for ten. His son Peter will spend fifteen months in prison, while Ross got 36 weeks. When sentencing, Judge Guy Whitburn reportedly said that “a clearer more flagrant breach of copyright law is hard to find”.
Welcoming the sentencing, PPL’s Richard Stewart told reporters: “The judge clearly recognised the significant value and importance of intellectual property rights and sentenced the defendants accordingly”, while BPI piracy man David Wood added: “The defendants made a considerable income from supplying unlicensed and illegally downloaded music to pubs and clubs in the North of England and their actions have not only harmed the music industry but also those landlords who, in difficult economic times, believed they were paying for a legitimate service when in fact they were also being exploited”.
