Welcome Shira and Thank You Maria

The new head of the Copyright Office is Shira Perlmutter.  Shira was already a very accomplished copyright lawyer when I first met her at the Fordham international copyright gathering in 1999.   She gave a very polite but rapier-like takedown of one Andrew Bridges who was being very…well…Andrew Bridges about something.  (A role that works for […]

@SGAWrites and Society of Composers & Lyricists Proposal for Secret Deals — Artist Rights Watch

[Editor Charlie sez: Here’s an excerpt from the important joint comment by the Songwriters Guild and the Society of Composers & Lyricists to the Copyright Office about how to address the previously secret deals between digital music services and publishers (called the “Negotiated Agreements”.  Read the full comment here.].] With potentially hundreds of millions of dollars […]

“I don’t need another email whining about COVID”: Austin Landlords Lead the Way into the New Venue-Free Future

When former real estate lawyer and current Austin Mayor Steve Adler cancelled SXSW in February there was one upside. Given his deep experience as a real estate lawyer he would appreciate the vast economic complexities of the sudden contraction of the cash flow to the Live Music Capitol of the World. In fact, Mayor Adler […]

Why No One Should Be Surprised About Tencent

MTP readers will not be surprised at the Executive Order relating to Tencent and one of its apps called “WeChat.”  The WeChat app has long been considered a tool of censorship associated with China’s Ministry of State Security and the Chinese Communist Party. Most prominently, WeChat was linked to action taken by the ruling Chinese […]

The TikTok Blame Game Starts

The walls appear to be closing in on TikTok (or as it’s becoming known, TikSoft).  This is probably particularly galling to the founder of Bytedance (TikTok’s parent company). Zhang Yiming worked at Microsoft but left in 2008. Mr. Zhang is launching a Google-style reaction and deflection campaign against the U.S. Government’s standard Committee on Foreign […]