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Here’s the first question: Do you subscribe to Tuk’s Copyright Law Report? You should! If your job touches any intellectual property issues in the worlds of music, photography, film, literary properties, you are missing out.
Now that THAT is out of the way, go to the TCLR for a free analysis of the Court’s ruling. Or, you can read the entire ruling yourself below.
Music streaming royalties in the United States are comically small. The tech companies originally purported to democratize music distribution, but in reality they have entrenched themselves in a financial ecosystem that pays the artists even less than the traditional record label model of the 1960s ever did through an oligarchy that wields outsized bargaining power.
Back in 2018, the US Congress passed the Music Modernization Act which looked promising from the standpoint of increasing artist streaming income, but little substantive progress has been made for the music creators since then. The streaming revenue earned by music creators in the US is not appreciably better than it was before 2018.
In the United Kingdom, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons has recently issued a report entitled the Economics of Music Streaming. In this Report, the Committee adopts a shockingly pro-creator stance. You can read the entire 122 page report report below.
The huge takeaway from this report is that the Committee recommends that the UK government enact legislation that would impose a 50/50 split on streaming revenues between streaming platform and artist (See Report at p.47). In this respect, the UK government is light years ahead of the United States government position, which is simply mired in bureaucracy.
To put this in proper perspective, currently Spotify pays artists between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream, which means most artists do not earn enough revenue from streaming payments to even earn a living. Contrast that with Spotify’s $2.4 Billion gross earnings in Q3 2021 alone, and it becomes pretty tough to justify the notion that music creators are being treated equitably.
It remains to be seen what legislative action (if any) the UK Government will take on this matter. The Committee’s position should be noted by policy makers in the United States.
The Report contains Parliamentary information and is licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.
As we enter September, college football is in the air, along with all the traditions that we have come to know over the past decades. One of the most famous of those traditions - “the 12th Man” concept - belongs to Texas A&M football. This may come as a surprise to the fans of the Seattle Seahawks, but that is neither here nor there.
It is this piece of college football lore that is the center of a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (“Fifth Circuit”) decision in Canada Hockey LLC d/b/a Epic Sports v. Team A&M University Athletic Department, et al; (5th Cir. 2021; Docket No. 20-20503).
Read more FREE here at Tuk’s Copyright Law Reporter.
The creation of the Copyright Claims Board (the “Board”) under the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement Act of 2019 (the “CASE Act” or “Act”)) is one of the unexpected byproducts of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. What follows is a brief summary of the major points of the Act.
There were advocates on both sides of this legislation. Supporting the legislation was Copyright Alliance. Opposing the legislation was the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
As of right now, until the Board is firing on all cylinders, the only way to prosecute a copyright infringement claim is to file a lawsuit in the US District Court. A claimant should be represented by legal counsel who can navigate the federal rules of civil procedure and move the matter forward.
It would seem logical to think that a purpose behind the CASE Act is to create an alternative dispute resolution system for copyright claims to be resolved outside of the federal court system. On the surface, it sounds like a reasonable idea. So far, so good. However, like everything else, the devil is in the details.
You can read my detailed analysis over at Tuk’s Copyright Law Reporter.
For the relevant statutory language, please see below:
CASE Act Excerpt 12292020 by Bryan Tuk on Scribd
Professional photographers and content creators on Instagram: your professional lives just got more difficult.
Did you know that when you post your photographs on Instagram, under Instagram’s Terms of Service, you “grant[ed] to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to the content that [he/she] post[s] on or through [Instagram]”? According to the District Court for the Southern District of New York, you are doing exactly that.
As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details: Instagram’s Terms of Use.
Read moreDue to demand, On Friday, April 3rd at 3:30pm eastern, there will be a second videoconference on the Ninth Circuit’s decision, which I broke down initially here. The videoconference will be interactive, and will address questions from music educators about how the field of copyright law has significantly shifted this this court ruling.