Entertainment Law Update Episode 160 – August/September 2023
Addressing for the first time whether California law establishes a right of public performance for the owners of pre-1972 sound recordings, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found no such right for music and...more
One of the provisions included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act that President Trump signed into law on December 27, 2020 addresses the so-called “felony streaming” loophole in the Copyright Act and criminal code. ...more
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
Main Quest: Does Your Gaming Stream Violate the Copyright Act? Streaming platforms, such as Twitch, Mixer and YouTube Gaming, are quickly becoming household names, with daily viewership rates that rival those of more...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
If a web server located outside the United States hosts video content that can be viewed by Internet users located in the United States, does a public performance result under U.S. copyright law?...more
Over the years, the Internet has become the basic foundational infrastructure for the global movement of data of all kinds. With continued growth at a phenomenal rate, the Internet has moved from a quiet means 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
With the lifting of the International Skating Union ban on the use of music with lyrics, the Olympics in Pyeongchang is the first in which singles and pairs ice skaters can compete to music with lyrics (Ice Dancers have been...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
Originally published in Radio Ink - January 12, 2017. Most radio stations have received emails in the past several weeks from both the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) and Global Music Rights (GMR) regarding an...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit agreed with the New York Court of Appeals that there is no New York State common law “right of public performance” for pre-1972 recordings that is equivalent to federal copyright...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
During recent years, the Internet has become the basic foundational infrastructure for the global movement of data of all kinds. With continued growth at a phenomenal rate, the Internet has moved from a quiet means of...more