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Macho Man Songwriter Wins Termination Case

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Village Peo­ple song­writer, lead singer and ersatz police offi­cer, Vic­tor Willis, has pre­vailed in a law­suit chal­leng­ing his ter­mi­na­tion of assign­ment (and result­ing recap­ture) of copy­right to his many hit songs.  To be hon­est, the deci­sion is very straight­for­ward and there really were not any dif­fi­cult issues pre­sented, par­tic­u­larly because the music pub­lisher with­drew its claim that the songs were works made for hire (which would have ren­dered any attempt to ter­mi­nate inef­fec­tive).  The only argu­ment advanced by the pub­lisher was that Mr. Willis could not ter­mi­nate his assign­ment because he was only one of sev­eral joint authors of the assigned songs.

This argu­ment was friv­o­lous, how­ever, because [Read more…]

Filed Under: Music, Termination Tagged With: , , ,

Supreme Court News Flash: Downloads Still Not Public Performances

October 3, 2011 By 1 Comment

Wharfedale woofer
Creative Commons License photo credit: wstry­der

File this one under “priv­i­leged glimpses of the bloody obvi­ous.”  In a devel­op­ment that could be a sur­prise only to ASCAP and its coun­sel, the Supreme Court today has rejected ASCAP’s peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, leav­ing in place the Sec­ond Circuit’s rul­ing that the mere act of down­load­ing a sound record­ing does not con­sti­tute a pub­lic per­for­mance of the down­loaded song.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Compulsory Licenses & Rate Court, Music Tagged With: , , , ,

MP3tunes Summary Judgment Decision: Defendants Only Liable For Specific Songs In Takedown Notice That Were Not Taken Down

August 23, 2011 By 1 Comment


Creative Commons License photo credit: Tac Ander­son

The South­ern Dis­trict of New York has issued its rul­ing in the Capi­tol Records v. MP3tunes case, grant­ing par­tial sum­mary judg­ment for each side. The bot­tom line is that MP3tunes and its founder, Michael Robert­son (also the founder of MP3.com), are only liable for the infringe­ment of sound record­ings that were specif­i­cally iden­ti­fied in DMCA take­down notices but not removed from users’ accounts.

One amaz­ing nugget hid­den in the first foot­note of the deci­sion (page 12), is the court’s hold­ing that the DMCA safe har­bor applies to pre-1972 sound record­ings, even though such record­ings are not pro­tected by fed­eral copy­right. This hold­ing, if noticed and fol­lowed by Jus­tice Kap­nick, should destroy the claims brought by UMG Record­ings against Groove­shark in New York State court. UMG brought these claims in state court, lim­ited to com­mon law copy­right infringe­ment for pre-’72 record­ings, as an attempted end-run around the DMCA.

There are lots of other points of inter­est in the deci­sion, which I will get to soon. In the mean­time, I wanted to post the deci­sion as quickly as pos­si­ble for your read­ing enjoyment:

 

Filed Under: DMCA, Litigation, Music, Sound Recordings Tagged With: , , , , ,

Recording Artists Set To Recapture Rights To Classic Albums

August 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

The upcom­ing war between record­ing artists and their slave­mas­ters, er, I mean record labels, con­cern­ing ter­mi­na­tion of copy­right trans­fers and the related work made for hire issue is a topic near and dear to my heart.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Music, Ownership, Sound Recordings, Termination, Work Made For Hire Tagged With: , ,