Entertainment Law Update Episode 160 – August/September 2023
Happy New Year! Did I Miss My Chance at Opportunity Zones? Opportunity zones were introduced in 2017 as part of President Trump’s tax reform bill. Taxpayers with capital gains can receive several tax benefits if the...more
In the music world, performance rights organizations (“PROs”) serve an intermediary function between songwriters and music publishers and third parties who perform the protected works publicly. Among the largest PROs in the...more
Nashville is home to a lot of musicians. It is also home to a number of organizations known as “performing rights organizations,” or PROs. Within the United States, the three main PROs are Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI),...more
So you’ve already written and recorded a song and determined who owns it, but now what can you as an owner do with it? What rights in the song do you have, that no one else does? The owner of the copyright in a work has...more
As we reported this spring, the “Music Modernization Act” (MMA) working through Congress avowed to bring the royalty determination formula for digital music services into the 21st Century. In April, the House of...more
As we promised in our prior post, we have an update on the “Music Modernization Act” (MMA) that promises to advance copyright law governing digital transmissions of sound recordings into the 21st Century. In a rare act of...more
In a multi-jurisdictional dispute between a band and a satellite radio provider, the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit adopted reasoning similar to that of the New York Court of Appeals (IP Update, Vol. 20, No. 3) in...more
The Background: Since 1941, performing rights organizations ("PROs"), which pool the copyrights held by a work's composer, songwriter, and publisher and collectively license those rights to music users, have been subject to...more
In a unanimous October 26, 2017, decision, the Supreme Court of Florida concluded that Florida common law does not recognize an exclusive right of public performance in pre-1972 sound recordings. Thus, members of the band,...more
A few months ago, we brought to your attention a case initiated by The Turtles, seeking royalties in New York for the unauthorized performance of their pre-1972 sound recordings. In that decision, the Court of Appeals of New...more
1. Registration of a song with a PRO does not provide any copyright protection.- The most common misunderstanding I encounter from songwriters is that registering their songs with one of the U.S. music performance rights...more
Introduction - •Music copyrights: –Musical works – sheet music and lyrics •Author is generally composer/lyricist and controls •Can be administered through a music publisher - ...more
On Thursday, the United States filed its brief (link is external)in its appeal of a decision by the district court for the Southern District of New York (link is external), which rejected the US Department of Justice’s...more
On December 20, 2016, the New York Court of Appeals (New York’s highest court) issued a landmark state copyright law decision, holding in response to a certified question from the Second Circuit in Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius...more
On December 20, 2016, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, held that no common law public performance right exists for pre-1972 sound recordings. The issue of whether a common law public performance...more
Answering a question certified to it by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the New York Court of Appeals held in Flo & Eddie, Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio, Inc., that New York’s common law does not protect the right to publicly...more
Greenberg Glusker music law partner William I. Hochberg was quoted in an August 4, 2016, Daily Journal article, “DOJ declines to modify consent decrees, angers PROs.”...more
On August 4, 2016, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) rejected changes to the 1941 consent decrees with ASCAP and BMI. These decrees have been in place since 1941, when the DOJ settled antitrust claims with ASCAP and BMI...more
CBS recently secured a potential landmark victory that could benefit radio stations, streaming services, and satellite radio providers—many of whom have been mired in litigation for years with owners of sound recordings of...more
This week, after a string of wins, two members of the classic rock group the Turtles suffered a setback in their lawsuit against satellite radio provider, SiriusXM (Flo & Eddie Inc. v. Sirius XM Radio Inc.)....more
The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice this month announced that it has opened a review of the 73-year-old ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees. In its press release, the DOJ noted that it is most interested in comments...more
From cassette tapes to CDs to Pandora and Spotify, innovations in the music field over the past two decades have drastically changed how people access music. Songwriters, however, are paid according to a system that has been...more
On September 17, 2013, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the consent decree entered into by and between the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the...more