KARLA TALLAS - SHARED TREASURES HARD ROCKER | Page 9

SCORPIONS, Košice 2009
for “certain.” I received e-mails and could
prove that they were breaking the law
and were using the name of my media in
their Terms and Conditions. According to
the law, this is part of unfair competition
– practices that are so typical in Eastern
European countries (and probably not
just these countries).
During our first season I headed to a
festival in Germany while part of the
HARD ROCKER crew attended one of the
biggest festivals in our home country. A few
months before, the promoter and I agreed on
the conditions for our mutual cooperation.
According to them, we were allowed to sell the
magazine at the festival. Everything changed
after the guys arrived to the venue. They hit me
with the bad news that they were forbidden to
sell HARD ROCKER there and they were told to
immediately pack up everything and leave. The
photographer even had no place to charge his
battery, because he wasn’t allowed to enter the
backstage area – in fact nobody from our crew
was allowed. I called the promoter and tried to
sort out all the mess, but to no avail. He denied
our agreement about the magazine sales
and warned me not to cause any problems,
otherwise all our cooperation would be over.
If I wanted to carry on in our market, I didn’t
have much of a choice. I felt like I was being
KISS, Prague 2010
backed into a corner, but I had to accept this
also because of my crew – we would be pushed
out of the game and wouldn’t be accredited for
the promoter’s events anymore. I was dealing
with this injustice as the rage was growing
inside me. Here I am, the owner of a very
expensive, published magazine, promoting
those who are boycotting me at the same time.
There was no bigger source of support back
in my home country. The promoter preferred
smaller webzines, often of a really bad quality,
over local printed media only for the reason
that they came from abroad. They even have
all the comforts provided by the promoter,
including a hotel and transport straight to the
backstage area. I couldn’t do anything about it.
I had no rights to determine the conditions for
investing in the event. There were just such big
differences between media. The competitive
magazine had exclusivity there, so everything
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