Higher Costs for Creators to Protect Their Rights
It seems like individual creators just can’t catch a break. As of yesterday, it became much more expensive for the majority of creative artists, particularly songwriters, recording artists and multi-media artists, to protect their works by registering them with the U.S. Copyright Office. While one does not need to register to obtain copyright protection, there […]
Synching Up Copyright, Contracts, Amazon and Warner Music Group
A little over a week ago, I attended through meetup.com, a panel discussion on synchronization licensing. As a refresher, synchronization licensing, or “synch” licensing, is the permission required to incorporate copyrighted music into audio-visual works, such as films TV shows, ads, videogames and, yes, YouTube videos. The panel was put together by Legal Hackers and […]
The Biggest Mistake Composers Make About The Music Business
I hear it all the time. Composers think that if they just sign up with a performing rights organization (PRO) like ASCAP or BMI that’s all they need to do to protect themselves. Don’t get me wrong – every composer should belong to a PRO. But there are at least seven ways a composer can […]
GoldieBlox and the Beastie Boys: Parody, Piracy or Publicity Ploy
This article was originally posted on the ScoreStreet blog on November 27, 2013. In case you’ve not tuned into the TV news, the blogosphere or social media in the past couple of days, you may have missed the uproar over a small company’s use of the Beastie Boys’ song Girls in a YouTube video ad […]
The Good Wife and the Parody Defense
Imagine my surprise when I tuned in to yesterday’s episode of The Good Wife, expecting the usual sexual and political intrigue and found myself in the middle of a copyright infringement case that seemed to have elements of the Supreme Court’s decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (the case where the high court held that 2 […]