Salt Pepper Ketchoop » law

Performance Rights Act rolls on

Joe — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:01:05 +0000

ArsTechnica has a piece today on Pandora’s support of the Performance Rights Act.

Radio has ramped up its opposition to the act, claiming that the act will cost thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue. Somewhat ironically, the site also claims that the act will hurt music diversity on the radio.

Um…?

Post Grammy thoughts in brief

Joe — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:51:11 +0000

NARAS lived up to expectations by failing to remain relevant and rewarding the most commercially successful/ elder statesmen rather than those making waves. No disrespect to Robert Plant but everyone surprised by his win just needs to think back to Herbie Hancock last year. Burning Spear winning the reggae category really gets on my nerves. Did anyone actually listen to that album? Also Daft Punk winning best dance record for a song released in 2001 is another testament. Oh well, whatever.
Total music shutting down comes as no surprise to me. Listening to the European CEO of Nokia try to spin it and explain how comes with music works differently on friday was pretty humorous though. Sorry Rick Rubin, but streaming music is not the way to save the industry. The internet is not ubiquitous enough to benefit from a cloud based music library system, and there’s no value in letting someone else curate your music library. Seeking alternative revenue streams and letting big business pay while the consumers get a free ride is probably the most viable option at this point. Chris Anderson talks about it here in detail. I’m extremely excited for his new book that comes out in the spring. The Long Tail was a good jumping off point but the theory is much more evolved at this point.
Speaking of alternative revenue streams, the ticketmaster/livenation deal is kind of the defintion of “getting it” when it comes to making money off of music. Antitrust suits are probably in the works as we speak, but when you look beyond the venue/artist monopoly and actually examine how diversified the two companies involved actually are, you’ll see that they’re poised to thrive in this new economy while many others flounder.
Neil Portnow’s speech always makes me laugh but this year’s was above and beyond hilarious. Neil, please leave the co-opting of Obamamania to Pepsi. Secretary of the arts is an old argument that holds no water. However, props for mentioning the performance royalties for radio thing. Great to see that gaining momentum.

more on recent issues

Joe — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:39:56 +0000

After the Youtube debacle, Rolling stone is reporting that Google is pulling posts containing copyrighted tracks from people’s Blogger pages without warning. Classy move. WMG’s stock is way up, but instinct tells me there’s no way it’s staying that way.

The public performance rights bill i wrote about here was introduced into congress last week. Choice quotes include ” Our ignorance of intellectual property rights on this issue is a worldwide embarrassment and it must end now,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a co-sponsor of the House bill.”

Calling it a “record label bailout” is tacky and embarassing to all involved, though.

more here

Youtube users fight the mute

Joe — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:51:40 +0000

Last week, youtube decided to mute user created videos that feature copyrighted music. For now, the only videos affected are those including music owned by Warner, but more are sure to follow. Needless to say, this created a deluge of angry anime fans, guitar hero players, and preteens recreating the dances from music videos in their bedrooms. While some have opted to voice their disdain via youtube-embedded letters to WMG (pictured at left). Others appear to have already figured out a workaround.
Youtube’s proprietary system seems to be matching the copyrighted songs’ waveforms with the waveforms in the background of each video. In order to counteract this, video uploaders have begun to modify the pitch and tempo of the songs posted in their videos in order to skirt the search. Pretty crafty if you ask me. Pretty foolish at the same time on behalf of the bigwigs though. I can totally understand youtube wanting to cover their ass with regards to any copyright infringement claim from the labels but this scattershot approach to hindering creativity and alienating your consumer base doesn’t strike me as the best move for the already sputtering labels. Warner, there’s a reason your stock is trading at $2. Stop pissing off the people that support your artists. Figure out a way to add value and encourage interactivity. There’s only so many things you can monetize in the modern digital world. Deal with it.

Technorati Tags: youtube, warner, muting, copyright, law

Performance Royalties for Radio in 2009?

Joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:49:26 +0000

This article over at Variety clued me in to one of the more sensible things that the RIAA has done lately. They’re finally pushing congress hard for a uniform public performance royalty from radio stations. The bill was originally introduced backed in December of 2007 and Passed the House Judiciary Committee back in June but seems to have stalled around the time of that whole economic crisis thing. Pfft. Hit the jump for a bunch of background and analysis on what’s going on.

The articles are a trifle hard to grasp, so I’ll explain what’s going on in layman’s terms. Under the current US copyright scheme, each song has two separate copyrights – the composition and the sound recording. The composition copyright is held by the songwriter. The sound recording copyright is the protection afforded to the performer(s) of the underlying composition. Let’s take Baby, One More Time for example. Britney Spears didn’t write the song. Some dude named Martin Sandberg did. Thus, Sandberg owns the composition copyright. Britney (or more specifically, her record label) owns the Sound Recording copyright. Under the current licensing scheme. They both get paid whenever someone buys a copy of the song. However, only Sandberg gets paid when the song gets played on the radio.

The original logic behind this concept was that radio was nothing more than a promotional vehicle and wasn’t making enough money to recoup double. Nowadays, though, this is CLEARLY not the case. As the variety article points out, there are tons of stations that are based entirely around old catalogs of tunes. Clearly the Who’s Tommy needs no more promotion at this juncture. By the same token, internet broadcasters are all paying performance royalties despite the fact that they’re barely squeaking out a profit. Clearly there’s a discrepancy here.

Broadcasters are obviously not fans of this new proposition, since it will basically siphon about $500 million in revenue away from them and back to the record labels. They’ll argue that they’re getting hit just as hard in the economy (Clear channel just laid off close to 2000 people). The reality is, though, that there’s no reason for this scheme to exist any more. It’s one of a multitude of copyright issues that no longer stand up in the 21st century.

It seems like the Recording Industry is turning over a bit of a new leaf to start 2009. They’re finally using their strength to get PROACTIVE things done in congress. Suing file sharers was basically the modern equivalent of a jaywalking ticket. They didn’t win a single case, spent tons of dough, and saw nothing but a decline in their market share because of it. The future of music is in licensing. But that’s a post for another day. If you want a more intellectual view of this whole performance royalty thing, I encourage you to check out John Kettle’s law review article on the subject. Kettle was my professor in law school and largely got me to the point I’m at now. It’s a bit dated but still very relevant to the subject at hand.

Technorati Tags: music, law, royalties, licensing