Note: Please be sure to read to the end for an important update regarding a 2019 Supreme Court decision regarding copyright registrations. I was recently roped into a Facebook feed by a composer client and asked to opine on whether composers and songwriters (and other creative artists for that matter) should register their works with the […]
Before getting to the Summary the Summary Order issued by the Second Circuit on December 19, a bit of a review is appropriate. The Second Circuit’s decision has to do with whether the consent decree under which BMI has operated for decades requires it to engage in “100% licensing” (also known as “full work licensing”) […]
On March 30, 2017, nearly two years ago to the day that they introduced the Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2015, Reps. Nadler and Blackburn now re-introduce the bill as the Fair Play Fair Pay Act of 2017. Will this legislation go through or will it just be another “repeat and fade out?” My […]
In what had been scheduled to be a mere pre-motion conference, the federal district judge overseeing the BMI Consent Decree, Louis L. Stanton, decided to hold a hearing on Friday, September 16. He then issued a six-page Opinion and Declaratory Judgment, ruling against DOJ’s interpretation of the decree which would have required 100% or “whole […]
On August 4, the Department of Justice (DOJ) publicly released its “Statement of the Department of Justice on the Closing of the Antitrust Division’s Review of the ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees” (DOJ Statement). The Justice Department issued the DOJ Statement after nearly two years of reviewing, at ASCAP and BMI’s request, whether the decades-old […]
On June 2, a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s granting of summary judgment to defendants and vacated an award of attorney’s fees in the case of VMG SalSoul, LLC v. Ciccone. Plaintiff alleged that Madonna’s mega-hit, Vogue, infringed both the copyright in the composition and the copyright in the sound […]
Before the Memorial Day holiday, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by my friend and colleague, the composer Dennis Tobenski. Our 90-minute talk, which was posted last week, covered a variety of topics applicable to composers, songwriters and other creators, including copyright principles, fair use, the role of PROs and estate considerations for artists. […]
This Friday, President Obama will be delivering the keynote address at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas. Although originally just a music conference, SXSW now has three overlapping sections, Interactive, Film and Music. While it is doubtful that the President will be taking questions from the audience, songwriters and other […]
Last week, the Commerce Department’s Internet Policy Task Force issued its White Paper on Remixes, First Sale and Statutory Damages, a 100-page report with nearly 600 footnotes, plus appendices. To paraphrase the opening voice over to the recently-canceled TV show, The Soup, I’ve read the report so you don’t have to. And just like the […]
[Note: This piece was previously posted on NewMusicBox, a site for composers and fans of contemporary classical and other experimental music, on September 24, 2015.] It’s another presidential election cycle and—in addition to PAC moneymen, countless commercials, polls, trolls, sound bites, and sniping—there’s the new tradition of one candidate or another pissing off some well-known […]