[Editor Charlie sez: This post is a version of Chris Castle’s comment in the current Copyright Office rulemaking on the transparency of the MLC and originally appeared on The Trichordist.] By Chris Castle Just when you think you understand Title I of the Music Modernization Act, another toad runs out from under a rock. My nickname […]
The wisest among us learn to use their portents well There’s no need to hurry, it’s all downhill to hell. From “Don’t Stand Still“, written by Original Snake Boy, performed by Guy Forsyth The Copyright Office has solicited comments on the transparency of The MLC and received quite a few well-thought out comments (if I […]
The Copyright Office has posted notices of proposed rules on four topics: Confidential information, royalty reporting by MLC, the transparency of the MLC, and the notices and reporting. Lots to drill down on, thanks to the Copyright Office for all the work on these which must have been a tremendous effort.
The services want to codify their ability to change song titles to whatever they think works better for them. Shall we stop them?
[This post originally appeared in the MusicTechPolicy Monthly Newsletter before the announcement of the MLC vendors.] Title I of the Music Modernization Act is clear about a few things, one of which is the creation of the “musical works database.” That database is for a specific purpose-it is to be used by the mechanical licensing […]
The U.S. Copyright Office issued an interim rule for comment that lays out an intricate and well thought out approach to the Register’s role in designating the Mechanical Licensing Collective and the Digital Licensee Coordinator under Title I of the Music Modernization Act.
If all a digital music service needs to do in order to claim they have a licene to reproduce and distribute a song is send a notice to the Copyright Office is send a notice saying they can’t find the song copyright owner, how hard do you think they’ll look? Particularly if they know that […]
An update on the state of the Copyright Office debacle also known as mass filing of “address unknown” notices under Section 115 (you can see the largely unusable posting of these notices at this link on the Copyright Office site).
Here’s some charts you won’t see in the trades or even on the Copyright Office site-Royalty Claim’s Address “Unknown” Mass NOI chart that Royalty Claim measured by number of filings January 1-June 30, 2017.
We get an update this week on the total “address unknown” mass NOIs filed with the Copyright Office for the royalty-free windfall loophole. This time we have to thank our our friends at Paperchain in Sydney for doing the work of decompressing the massive numbers of unsearchable compressed files posted on the Copyright Office website. As you can see, there’s been an increase of approximately 70% since January 2017.
As noted in Part 1 of this post, Google, Amazon and others are filing what are reportedly “millions” of “address unknown” NOIs with the U.S. Copyright Office to avoid paying royalties on songs like “Fragile (Live” by Sting, even if they have licensed “Fragile” the album versions. I fully expect that Pandora will eventually do […]
