Showing posts with label Warner Music Group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warner Music Group. Show all posts
Friday, September 13, 2013
Clear Channel-Warner Music Deal Rewrites the Rules on Royalties; New York Times, 9/12/13
Ben Sisario, New York Times; Clear Channel-Warner Music Deal Rewrites the Rules on Royalties:
"On Thursday, the company announced a deal with the Warner Music Group that would for the first time allow the label and its acts to collect royalties when their songs were played on Clear Channel’s 850 broadcast stations. In exchange, Clear Channel will receive a favorable rate in the growing but expensive world of online streaming...In an arrangement that has long irked record companies and led to many lobbying standoffs in Washington, terrestrial broadcasters are not required to pay royalties to labels and performing artists for the records they play on the air. On the other side, Internet radio services like Pandora, as well as broadcasters like Clear Channel through its station Web sites and iHeartRadio app, pay these royalties, but they have complained that the statutory rates for licensing music are too high. (Both terrestrial and online radio also pay music publishers, which control songwriting rights.)"
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Recording Industry, on the Ropes; New York Times, 7/4/10
Devin Leonard, New York Times; The Recording Industry, on the Ropes:
"WHEN I started covering the music industry for Fortune nearly a decade ago, I often heard people gleefully predict that the demise of the big record companies was just around the corner.
Thanks to the Internet, my label-hating sources predicted, bands would be able to bond directly with their fans online, bypassing greedy record labels intent on cheapening the product. Supposedly, the results would be less crassly commercial music from acts like New Kids on the Block and more wondrous sounds from bands like Radiohead.
Only those with ears of tin wouldn’t wish for that. And I have to admit that I heard this argument so often that I started to believe it.
Fast-forward to the present. The recording industry has indeed been decimated by the Internet, as Fred Goodman vividly describes in “Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis” (Simon & Schuster, 323 pages). “It is the first commercial medium to feel the gale force of cyberspace,” he writes. “The entire business, including the Warner Music Group, has been blown off its foundation.”
Is this a good thing? I have had numerous conversations with musicians — both famous and obscure, but all of them doing important work — who lament that they are making much less money now that the major labels are on the ropes. Even Lady Gaga, the most popular singer in the world today, is feeling the pain. Her album sales are a fraction of the numbers that Britney Spears posted in the late 1990s at the height of her career.
Mr. Goodman says the major labels have made their share of mistakes, like suing college students to stamp out illegal downloading and sometimes treating artists like chattel. But he worries that if companies like Warner Music can’t rejuvenate themselves in the digital age, we may never see another “Abbey Road.”
In “Fortune’s Fool,” Mr. Goodman uses Mr. Bronfman’s career to tell the story of the industry’s implosion and its uncertain future. A contributor to Rolling Stone and author of “The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce,” Mr. Goodman was able to gain extensive access to Mr. Bronfman and many other important industry executives. His book is full of colorful anecdotes and astonishing quotes from his subjects.
At times, I wish that Mr. Goodman would have delved more deeply into the cultural implications of Warner Music’s tribulations and spent less time on music industry politics. But for the most part, “Fortune’s Fool” is a great read.
Mr. Bronfman is a strangely sympathetic character. The grandson of Samuel Bronfman, who built his liquor empire by selling Canadian whisky to bootleggers during Prohibition, he was anointed by his family to run the Seagram conglomerate in 1995. He raised eyebrows by steering it into the entertainment business, acquiring a movie studio and a record company.
In 2000, Mr. Bronfman naïvely engineered the sale of Seagram to Vivendi in a $33 billion stock swap. Soon, Vivendi was embroiled in an accounting scandal. The price of the company’s shares plummeted, and the value of the Bronfman family’s holdings tumbled by $3 billion. And that, many people assumed, was the end of his business career.
Yet, six years ago, he orchestrated a comeback as breathtaking as Mariah Carey’s return to the top 10 after her “Glitter” debacle. He and a team of private equity investors bought Warner Music for $2.6 billion, and he became its C.E.O. And he showed that he had a knack for hiring the right executives.
His choice for the company’s North American recorded music unit was Lyor Cohen, a former rap music promoter, whom his former clients affectionately nicknamed “Lansky,” after the legendary gangster Meyer Lansky.
“Fortune’s Fool” truly takes off when Mr. Goodman brings Mr. Cohen onstage and describes how he clawed his way up from managing tours for emerging rap acts like the Beastie Boys to landing in the executive suite at Warner Music.
Together, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Bronfman set out to show that the music industry wasn’t dead yet. They have faced innumerable challenges — the implosion of Tower Records, a generation of young consumers who refuse to pay for digital music, and technology company executives intent on capitalizing on the music industry’s troubles. By the way, these were the same people who told me that music industry executives like Mr. Bronfman were Sith lords and that they themselves were the Jedi.
By the end of “Fortune’s Fool,” Warner Music has outperformed most of its peers. But Mr. Goodman fears that the company’s long-term survival remains in question.
This is not a hagiography. Mr. Goodman obviously likes Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Cohen, but he also chronicles their missteps and occasionally boorish behavior. Remember those lawsuits against college kids? Mr. Bronfman was a huge supporter of those efforts.
In a lengthy epilogue, Mr. Goodman assails members of the “technorati” who urge artists to give their music away online and make up the difference by selling more concert tickets and T-shirts. Fair enough, but I was waiting for a more impassioned defense of the record labels themselves. Sure, they have released mountains of Top 40 schlock. But it paid the bills and enabled them to put out less-profitable music with real cultural value, like jazz, opera and all sorts of esoteric rock ’n’ roll.
They can’t afford to do that anymore. Now it’s pretty much all Lady Gaga all the time. No offense to her ladyship, but is that really progress?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/media/04shelf.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=devin&st=cse
"WHEN I started covering the music industry for Fortune nearly a decade ago, I often heard people gleefully predict that the demise of the big record companies was just around the corner.
Thanks to the Internet, my label-hating sources predicted, bands would be able to bond directly with their fans online, bypassing greedy record labels intent on cheapening the product. Supposedly, the results would be less crassly commercial music from acts like New Kids on the Block and more wondrous sounds from bands like Radiohead.
Only those with ears of tin wouldn’t wish for that. And I have to admit that I heard this argument so often that I started to believe it.
Fast-forward to the present. The recording industry has indeed been decimated by the Internet, as Fred Goodman vividly describes in “Fortune’s Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis” (Simon & Schuster, 323 pages). “It is the first commercial medium to feel the gale force of cyberspace,” he writes. “The entire business, including the Warner Music Group, has been blown off its foundation.”
Is this a good thing? I have had numerous conversations with musicians — both famous and obscure, but all of them doing important work — who lament that they are making much less money now that the major labels are on the ropes. Even Lady Gaga, the most popular singer in the world today, is feeling the pain. Her album sales are a fraction of the numbers that Britney Spears posted in the late 1990s at the height of her career.
Mr. Goodman says the major labels have made their share of mistakes, like suing college students to stamp out illegal downloading and sometimes treating artists like chattel. But he worries that if companies like Warner Music can’t rejuvenate themselves in the digital age, we may never see another “Abbey Road.”
In “Fortune’s Fool,” Mr. Goodman uses Mr. Bronfman’s career to tell the story of the industry’s implosion and its uncertain future. A contributor to Rolling Stone and author of “The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen and the Head-On Collision of Rock and Commerce,” Mr. Goodman was able to gain extensive access to Mr. Bronfman and many other important industry executives. His book is full of colorful anecdotes and astonishing quotes from his subjects.
At times, I wish that Mr. Goodman would have delved more deeply into the cultural implications of Warner Music’s tribulations and spent less time on music industry politics. But for the most part, “Fortune’s Fool” is a great read.
Mr. Bronfman is a strangely sympathetic character. The grandson of Samuel Bronfman, who built his liquor empire by selling Canadian whisky to bootleggers during Prohibition, he was anointed by his family to run the Seagram conglomerate in 1995. He raised eyebrows by steering it into the entertainment business, acquiring a movie studio and a record company.
In 2000, Mr. Bronfman naïvely engineered the sale of Seagram to Vivendi in a $33 billion stock swap. Soon, Vivendi was embroiled in an accounting scandal. The price of the company’s shares plummeted, and the value of the Bronfman family’s holdings tumbled by $3 billion. And that, many people assumed, was the end of his business career.
Yet, six years ago, he orchestrated a comeback as breathtaking as Mariah Carey’s return to the top 10 after her “Glitter” debacle. He and a team of private equity investors bought Warner Music for $2.6 billion, and he became its C.E.O. And he showed that he had a knack for hiring the right executives.
His choice for the company’s North American recorded music unit was Lyor Cohen, a former rap music promoter, whom his former clients affectionately nicknamed “Lansky,” after the legendary gangster Meyer Lansky.
“Fortune’s Fool” truly takes off when Mr. Goodman brings Mr. Cohen onstage and describes how he clawed his way up from managing tours for emerging rap acts like the Beastie Boys to landing in the executive suite at Warner Music.
Together, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Bronfman set out to show that the music industry wasn’t dead yet. They have faced innumerable challenges — the implosion of Tower Records, a generation of young consumers who refuse to pay for digital music, and technology company executives intent on capitalizing on the music industry’s troubles. By the way, these were the same people who told me that music industry executives like Mr. Bronfman were Sith lords and that they themselves were the Jedi.
By the end of “Fortune’s Fool,” Warner Music has outperformed most of its peers. But Mr. Goodman fears that the company’s long-term survival remains in question.
This is not a hagiography. Mr. Goodman obviously likes Mr. Bronfman and Mr. Cohen, but he also chronicles their missteps and occasionally boorish behavior. Remember those lawsuits against college kids? Mr. Bronfman was a huge supporter of those efforts.
In a lengthy epilogue, Mr. Goodman assails members of the “technorati” who urge artists to give their music away online and make up the difference by selling more concert tickets and T-shirts. Fair enough, but I was waiting for a more impassioned defense of the record labels themselves. Sure, they have released mountains of Top 40 schlock. But it paid the bills and enabled them to put out less-profitable music with real cultural value, like jazz, opera and all sorts of esoteric rock ’n’ roll.
They can’t afford to do that anymore. Now it’s pretty much all Lady Gaga all the time. No offense to her ladyship, but is that really progress?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/media/04shelf.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=devin&st=cse
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Bogus Copyright Claim Silences Yet Another Larry Lessig YouTube Presentation; TechDirt, 3/2/10
Mike Masnick, TechDirt; Bogus Copyright Claim Silences Yet Another Larry Lessig YouTube Presentation:
"Nearly a year ago, we wrote about how a YouTube presentation done by well known law professor (and strong believer in fair use and fixing copyright law), Larry Lessig, had been taken down, because his video, in explaining copyright and fair use and other such things, used a snippet of a Warner Music song to demonstrate a point. There could be no clearer example of fair use -- but the video was still taken down. There was some dispute at the time as to whether or not this was an actual DMCA takedown, or merely YouTube's audio/video fingerprinting technology (which the entertainment industry insists can understand fair use and not block it). But, in the end, does it really make a difference? A takedown over copyright is a takedown over copyright.
Amazingly enough, it appears that almost the exact same thing has happened again. A video of one of Lessig's presentations, that he just posted -- a "chat" he had done for the OpenVideoAlliance a week or so ago, about open culture and fair use, has received notice that it has been silenced. It hasn't been taken down entirely -- but the entire audio track from the 42 minute video is completely gone. All of it. In the comments, some say there's a notification somewhere that the audio has been disabled because of "an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG" (Warner Music Group) -- which would be the same company whose copyright caused the issue a year ago -- but I haven't seen or heard that particular message anywhere.
However, Lessig is now required to fill out a counternotice challenging the takedown -- while silencing his video in the meantime:
While you can still see the video on YouTube, without the audio, it's pretty much worthless. Thankfully, the actual video is available elsewhere, where you can both hear and see it. But, really, the fact that Lessig has had two separate videos -- both of which clearly are fair use -- neutered due to bogus copyright infringement risks suggests a serious problem. I'm guessing that, once again, this video was likely caught by the fingerprinting, rather than a direct claim by Warner Music. In fact, the issue may be the identical one, as I believe the problem last year was the muppets theme, which very, very briefly appears in this video (again) as an example of fair use in action. But it was Warner Music and others like it that demanded Google put such a fingerprinting tool in place (and such companies are still talking about requiring such tools under the law). And yet, this seems to show just how problematic such rules are.
Even worse, this highlights just how amazingly problematic things get when you put secondary liability on companies like Google. Under such a regime, Google would of course disable such a video, to avoid its own liability. The idea that Google can easily tell what is infringing and what is not is proven ridiculous when something like this is pulled off-line (or just silenced). When a video about fair use itself is pulled down for a bogus copyright infringement, it proves the point. The unintended consequences of asking tool providers to judge what is and what is not copyright infringement lead to tremendous problems with companies shooting first and asking questions later. They are silencing speech, on the threat that it might infringe on copyright.
This is backwards.
We live in a country that is supposed to cherish free speech, not stifle it in case it harms the business model of a company. We live in a country that is supposed to encourage the free expression of ideas -- not lock it up and take it down because one company doesn't know how to adapt its business model. We should never be silencing videos because they might infringe on copyright.
Situations like this demonstrate the dangerous unintended consequences of secondary liability. At least with Lessig, you have someone who knows what happened, and knows how to file a counternotice -- though, who knows how long it will take for this situation to be corrected. But for many, many, many other people, they are simply silenced. Silenced because of industry efforts to turn copyright law into something it was never intended to be: a tool to silence the wider audience in favor of a few large companies.
The system is broken. When even the calls to fix the system are silenced by copyright claims, isn't it time that we fixed the system?"
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100302/0354498358.shtml
"Nearly a year ago, we wrote about how a YouTube presentation done by well known law professor (and strong believer in fair use and fixing copyright law), Larry Lessig, had been taken down, because his video, in explaining copyright and fair use and other such things, used a snippet of a Warner Music song to demonstrate a point. There could be no clearer example of fair use -- but the video was still taken down. There was some dispute at the time as to whether or not this was an actual DMCA takedown, or merely YouTube's audio/video fingerprinting technology (which the entertainment industry insists can understand fair use and not block it). But, in the end, does it really make a difference? A takedown over copyright is a takedown over copyright.
Amazingly enough, it appears that almost the exact same thing has happened again. A video of one of Lessig's presentations, that he just posted -- a "chat" he had done for the OpenVideoAlliance a week or so ago, about open culture and fair use, has received notice that it has been silenced. It hasn't been taken down entirely -- but the entire audio track from the 42 minute video is completely gone. All of it. In the comments, some say there's a notification somewhere that the audio has been disabled because of "an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG" (Warner Music Group) -- which would be the same company whose copyright caused the issue a year ago -- but I haven't seen or heard that particular message anywhere.
However, Lessig is now required to fill out a counternotice challenging the takedown -- while silencing his video in the meantime:
While you can still see the video on YouTube, without the audio, it's pretty much worthless. Thankfully, the actual video is available elsewhere, where you can both hear and see it. But, really, the fact that Lessig has had two separate videos -- both of which clearly are fair use -- neutered due to bogus copyright infringement risks suggests a serious problem. I'm guessing that, once again, this video was likely caught by the fingerprinting, rather than a direct claim by Warner Music. In fact, the issue may be the identical one, as I believe the problem last year was the muppets theme, which very, very briefly appears in this video (again) as an example of fair use in action. But it was Warner Music and others like it that demanded Google put such a fingerprinting tool in place (and such companies are still talking about requiring such tools under the law). And yet, this seems to show just how problematic such rules are.
Even worse, this highlights just how amazingly problematic things get when you put secondary liability on companies like Google. Under such a regime, Google would of course disable such a video, to avoid its own liability. The idea that Google can easily tell what is infringing and what is not is proven ridiculous when something like this is pulled off-line (or just silenced). When a video about fair use itself is pulled down for a bogus copyright infringement, it proves the point. The unintended consequences of asking tool providers to judge what is and what is not copyright infringement lead to tremendous problems with companies shooting first and asking questions later. They are silencing speech, on the threat that it might infringe on copyright.
This is backwards.
We live in a country that is supposed to cherish free speech, not stifle it in case it harms the business model of a company. We live in a country that is supposed to encourage the free expression of ideas -- not lock it up and take it down because one company doesn't know how to adapt its business model. We should never be silencing videos because they might infringe on copyright.
Situations like this demonstrate the dangerous unintended consequences of secondary liability. At least with Lessig, you have someone who knows what happened, and knows how to file a counternotice -- though, who knows how long it will take for this situation to be corrected. But for many, many, many other people, they are simply silenced. Silenced because of industry efforts to turn copyright law into something it was never intended to be: a tool to silence the wider audience in favor of a few large companies.
The system is broken. When even the calls to fix the system are silenced by copyright claims, isn't it time that we fixed the system?"
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100302/0354498358.shtml
Thursday, July 9, 2009
K.K.R. and Bertelsmann May Make Sweet Music; New York Times, 7/9/09
New York Times; K.K.R. and Bertelsmann May Make Sweet Music:
"The fund run by Henry Kravis is teaming with the German media group Bertelsmann to pounce on some of the choicest bits of the music business — copyrights to songs.
Given the turbulence in the recorded music sector, and the ownership of libraries like Michael Jackson’s up in the air, they’ll likely have a wealth of assets from which to choose, the publication suggests.
Widespread digital distribution of music has hampered the ability of companies like Warner Music Group and EMI to make money from their traditional activity of finding new artists and marketing their tunes. Yet, their copyright businesses continue to produce profit, Breakingviews notes. In the quarter that ended in March, Warner’s publishing division posted 40 percent operating margins, four times those of its recorded music division."
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/kkr-and-bertelsmann-may-make-sweet-music-together/?scp=1&sq=copyright%20emi&st=cse
"The fund run by Henry Kravis is teaming with the German media group Bertelsmann to pounce on some of the choicest bits of the music business — copyrights to songs.
Given the turbulence in the recorded music sector, and the ownership of libraries like Michael Jackson’s up in the air, they’ll likely have a wealth of assets from which to choose, the publication suggests.
Widespread digital distribution of music has hampered the ability of companies like Warner Music Group and EMI to make money from their traditional activity of finding new artists and marketing their tunes. Yet, their copyright businesses continue to produce profit, Breakingviews notes. In the quarter that ended in March, Warner’s publishing division posted 40 percent operating margins, four times those of its recorded music division."
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/kkr-and-bertelsmann-may-make-sweet-music-together/?scp=1&sq=copyright%20emi&st=cse
Monday, March 23, 2009
As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes, The New York Times, 3/23/09
The New York Times: As Rights Clash on YouTube, Some Music Vanishes:
"In early December, Juliet Weybret, a high school sophomore and aspiring rock star from Lodi, Calif., recorded a video of herself playing the piano and singing “Winter Wonderland,” and she posted it on YouTube.
Weeks later, she received an e-mail message from YouTube: her video was being removed “as a result of a third-party notification by the Warner Music Group,” which owns the copyright to the Christmas carol.
The law provides a four-point test for the fair use of copyrighted works, taking into account things like the purpose, the size of an excerpt and the effect the use might have on the commercial value of the actual work...
The body of law is ever-evolving, and each era and technology seems to force new interpretations. In the 1960s, for example, the Zapruder film, the home movie that captured the Kennedy assassination, was bought and copyrighted by Time magazine. But a judge denied that it could be a copyrighted work because of its value to the public interest.
Many of the offending videos of the user-generated variety like Ms. Weybret’s — as opposed to copies of music videos produced by Warner and its artists — would fall under fair use, according to Mr. von Lohmann, because they are noncommercial and include original material produced by the user.
Others, including Warner Music’s lawyers, might argue that the videos, while themselves created for noncommercial purposes, are nevertheless being shown on YouTube, which is a moneymaking enterprise."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/23warner.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=youtube&st=cse
"In early December, Juliet Weybret, a high school sophomore and aspiring rock star from Lodi, Calif., recorded a video of herself playing the piano and singing “Winter Wonderland,” and she posted it on YouTube.
Weeks later, she received an e-mail message from YouTube: her video was being removed “as a result of a third-party notification by the Warner Music Group,” which owns the copyright to the Christmas carol.
The law provides a four-point test for the fair use of copyrighted works, taking into account things like the purpose, the size of an excerpt and the effect the use might have on the commercial value of the actual work...
The body of law is ever-evolving, and each era and technology seems to force new interpretations. In the 1960s, for example, the Zapruder film, the home movie that captured the Kennedy assassination, was bought and copyrighted by Time magazine. But a judge denied that it could be a copyrighted work because of its value to the public interest.
Many of the offending videos of the user-generated variety like Ms. Weybret’s — as opposed to copies of music videos produced by Warner and its artists — would fall under fair use, according to Mr. von Lohmann, because they are noncommercial and include original material produced by the user.
Others, including Warner Music’s lawyers, might argue that the videos, while themselves created for noncommercial purposes, are nevertheless being shown on YouTube, which is a moneymaking enterprise."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/business/media/23warner.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=youtube&st=cse
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
EFF Chastises YouTube, Seeks Fair Users; Public Knowledge, 2/4/09
Via Public Knowledge: EFF Chastises YouTube, Seeks Fair Users:
"In a post to the Deep Links blog yesterday, EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann makes it quite clear that he's had enough of Big Content's efforts to squelch fair uses on YouTube. He points to a recent spate of abusive takedowns--largely believed to be the result of a breakdown in negotiations between YouTube and the Warner Music Group--as evidence that the DMCA notice and takedown system is now being used blatantly as a tool for censorship, rather than copyright enforcement. His proposed solution comes in two parts. First, YouTube must fix Content ID, its automatic digital fingerprinting/filtering system...
Second, von Lohmann thinks that it's time for a little impact litigation and he's looking to the YouTube community for help".
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1976
"In a post to the Deep Links blog yesterday, EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann makes it quite clear that he's had enough of Big Content's efforts to squelch fair uses on YouTube. He points to a recent spate of abusive takedowns--largely believed to be the result of a breakdown in negotiations between YouTube and the Warner Music Group--as evidence that the DMCA notice and takedown system is now being used blatantly as a tool for censorship, rather than copyright enforcement. His proposed solution comes in two parts. First, YouTube must fix Content ID, its automatic digital fingerprinting/filtering system...
Second, von Lohmann thinks that it's time for a little impact litigation and he's looking to the YouTube community for help".
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1976
Friday, January 9, 2009
Many happy returns for Warner Music, The Guardian, 1/6/09
Via The Guardian: Many happy returns for Warner Music:
"Despite everyone's carefree joy in singing Happy Birthday to You, this simple song puts you in legal jeopardy every time it exits your mouth. A considerable amount of money flows to the corporation that owns the copyright. But ... maybe that company doesn't own the copyright, and maybe you are in no legal peril. Professor Robert Brauneis, of George Washington University law school, took a professional, long, deep look into these questions. This Happy Birthday matter, it turns out, is a murky mess.
Brauneis published a 69-page disquisition called Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song. Before plunging into the legal history, evidence and arguments, he examined the history...
...Brauneis reckons that the copyright probably expired, for various reasons, decades ago. Nevertheless, nominal ownership passed to a succession of individuals and then companies, which did and do aggressively collect fees.
The story comes with plenty of evidentiary paperwork and audio recordings. These include: filings in four federal court cases in the 1930s and 1940s; litigation filings over the management of a trust that was created to receive royalties; unpublished papers of and about Patty and Mildred Hill; probate court records in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Chicago; and records from the US Copyright Office.
Brauneis has put more than 100 items online at http://tinyurl.com/6p3ygk for you to peruse and sing along with."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/06/improbable-research-warner-music-copyright
"Despite everyone's carefree joy in singing Happy Birthday to You, this simple song puts you in legal jeopardy every time it exits your mouth. A considerable amount of money flows to the corporation that owns the copyright. But ... maybe that company doesn't own the copyright, and maybe you are in no legal peril. Professor Robert Brauneis, of George Washington University law school, took a professional, long, deep look into these questions. This Happy Birthday matter, it turns out, is a murky mess.
Brauneis published a 69-page disquisition called Copyright and the World's Most Popular Song. Before plunging into the legal history, evidence and arguments, he examined the history...
...Brauneis reckons that the copyright probably expired, for various reasons, decades ago. Nevertheless, nominal ownership passed to a succession of individuals and then companies, which did and do aggressively collect fees.
The story comes with plenty of evidentiary paperwork and audio recordings. These include: filings in four federal court cases in the 1930s and 1940s; litigation filings over the management of a trust that was created to receive royalties; unpublished papers of and about Patty and Mildred Hill; probate court records in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Chicago; and records from the US Copyright Office.
Brauneis has put more than 100 items online at http://tinyurl.com/6p3ygk for you to peruse and sing along with."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/06/improbable-research-warner-music-copyright
Monday, December 22, 2008
Warner stops the music on YouTube, London Guardian, 12/22/08
Via London Guardian: Warner stops the music on YouTube:
"Content will be removed from the site along with recordings owned by Warner Music's record publishing business, Warner/Chappell Music, which controls the copyright to songs including Happy Birthday to You and Winter Wonderland. Warner Music's withdrawal also covers amateur clips that feature its artists or copyrighted songs - potentially widening the action to hundreds of thousands of additional postings."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/22/warner-music-youtube
"Content will be removed from the site along with recordings owned by Warner Music's record publishing business, Warner/Chappell Music, which controls the copyright to songs including Happy Birthday to You and Winter Wonderland. Warner Music's withdrawal also covers amateur clips that feature its artists or copyrighted songs - potentially widening the action to hundreds of thousands of additional postings."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/22/warner-music-youtube
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)