The Pitch newsletter is a monthly update of legal issues and news affecting or related to the music, film and television, fine arts, media, professional athletics, eSports, and gaming industries. The Pitch features a diverse...more
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (“MLC”) was created to make paying songwriters and publishers easier. Just as performance rights organizations issue blanket licenses to music users (radio stations, television, venues,...more
The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act (“MMA”), signed into law on October 11, 2018, has transformed the music streaming industry in the years since its implementation. The...more
For the last twenty years, the music industry has been in a pitched battle to combat unauthorized downloading of music. Initially, the industry focused on filing lawsuits to shut down services that offered peer-to-peer or...more
U.S. Copyright Office Approves Mechanical Licensing Collective - There is a new federally appointed team in charge of licensing music to digital services which will result in payments to songwriters. The U.S. Copyright...more
A purchaser of an article of commerce expects to be able to freely sell it regardless of any intellectual property rights that it may embody. The resale of digital files, however, runs into a special barrier that ReDigi...more
The recently enacted Music Modernization Act (MMA) dramatically modernizes licensing in the digital age and attempts to fill gaps in the copyright landscape. The Act encompasses not only the MMA itself but, as well, the...more
Over the years, tastes have shifted from bands like the Beatles and Led Zeppelin to more electronically-produced sounds. But no matter your opinion of Justin Bieber’s or Lady Gaga’s artistic chops, there’s no doubt music –...more
A federal appeals court finds that online music service ReDigi infringed Capitol Records' copyrights by allowing users to resell legally purchased iTunes files. Digital music files may not be lawfully resold, according to...more
The results of the 2017 edition of China’s annual online piracy crackdown campaign, called the “Sword Net Action”, were recently published. As we announced earlier, the 2017 crackdown campaign promised to take a heavy hand...more
Online content providers continue to struggle with the challenge of copyright infringement by BitTorrent users. One of the most aggressive tacks is the one taken by Malibu Media, which, after instituting over 4,500 lawsuits...more
Garcia v. Google: “Doubtful” Copyright Ownership Claim in Film Performance Does Not Outweigh First Amendment Right to Free Speech - Why it matters: In a closely watched case that tests the limits of copyright protection,...more