IMPORTANT INFORMATION!
Unfortunately some fan clubs are still selling bootlegs, and SONY’s legal team is currently investigating several. If found guilty, the club’s accounts with both SONY and FTD will be closed instantly.

We must ask you not to supply such clubs if they approach you.

FTD does not police your activities but others do. We will however support SONY’s battle to stop illegal product, and we need your support. You may want to consider whether it’s really necessary to fill your magazines with reviews of illegal records, both encouraging fans to purchase them, and drawing attention to your own business. Reviews of such records will lead to speculation as to whether you sell this type of product or not. The professional people who investigate bootlegging are not naive! Unfortunately we have already been asked to stop delivery to one fan club, several others are being investigated, and a few were VERY lucky in the last 12 months not to get caught.

We know the argument: “Everybody else sells them, and if we don’t, the fans will just move all their purchases to the clubs who can deliver everything – including bootlegs”. You need to ask yourself if it’s worth the risk. Not only are you risking your own business here, but eventually you will also force FTD to restructure our business. If we start losing our customers, we will have to start a direct mail order business in order to keep servicing the fans in the various countries. We don’t want this, and neither do you.

Sometimes some of you feel the need to put the text of our newsletters on the Internet. Apart from the general music related information, we consider these newsletters confidential. We can’t decide what you do, but give it a thought, and get together with all the other clubs and find a way of dealing with the bootleg issue.


Thank you

Ernst & Roger



2008/11/06 Ernst Jorgensen - FTD / www.itselvistime.nl / www.epgold.com