The Licensing Plate

Lady Gaga Beats “Lady Goo Goo” in UK Court

Pop star Lady Gaga has won an injunction stopping the makers of an online children’s game from promoting an animated character called Lady Goo Goo, the company involved said Friday.

AP (full story)

Judge Asked to Reject Resistance to “Y.M.C.A.” Copyright Termination

Victor Willis, the original lead singer of the Village People, presents arguments why music publishers must accede to his attempt to terminate copyright grants on 32 songs. Meanwhile, other artists are about to terminate the rights to other songs — including rock anthem “Eye of the Tiger”

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

VH1 Movie Used Unlicensed Photos of N.W.A., Suit Says

VH1 did not have permission to use pictures of group N.W.A. in its documentary about the iconic hip hop founded by Dr. Dre with Ice Cube and others in 1986, the photographer claims in Manhattan federal court.

Courthouse News Service (full story)

Could one music downloader change U.S. copyright law?

In the age of iTunes and an-app-for-everything, Joel Tenenbaum’s battle with the music industry over illegal downloading seems as relevant as an eight-track cassette.

But it turns out the fight could produce something surprisingly enduring: a change in copyright law.

Reuters (full story)

Vimeo launches music store to help you license music for videos

Popular video sharing site Vimeo launched a new service today called Music Store that makes it simple to find and license music for online videos.

MediaBeat (full story)

Behind the music: Why Grooveshark takes a bite out of artists’ earnings

Grooveshark calls itself a radio though, of course, it’s not. It’s an on-demand service, which makes it more like Spotify than Pandora. If it was an online radio it would have to adhere to the US blanket licensing agreement Pandora adheres to and pay for all the music used on the site. Though Pandora pays artists and songwriters less than Spotify, it does have a licence for all music on its site – Grooveshark does not.

The Guardian (full story)

BlackBerry Music Service Becomes Official

Research in Motion unveiled its BBM Music service on Thursday. The new service is very much in line with the details that were leaked last week.

Billed as a “social music sharing and discovery service,” the music service is built on the back of the BlackBerry Messaging service, which has 45 million users worldwide. As noted in the early leaks, this is not a typical streaming or music download service.

Billboard (full story)

Jay-Z and Kanye West facing lawsuit over Watch the Throne sample

Jay-Z and Kanye West may face legal action over an unauthorised sample on their latest album. Soul singer Syl Johnson is considering suing the rappers over a clip on Watch the Throne, which the liner notes attribute to the wrong publishing company.

The Guardian (full story)

MP3tunes: A Victory for Music Lockers Is Good News for Music Fans

Via Electronic Frontier Foundation:

We’ve watched this year as Amazon, Google, and Apple have raced to roll out cloud-based music locker services. Each of these company’s services signals something in common: an apparent fear of liability for de-duplicating files uploaded by their customers. (De-duplicating means that the service does not store multiple identical files on its servers, even if more than one customer individually uploads the same file.) This can be a huge waste of storage, to little purpose other than pacifying copyright owners more concerned over form than substance. Because of this, Amazon and Google store a distinct and separate file for every single file that is uploaded to their services, and Apple reportedly paid $150 million in licensing fees for, among other things, the ability to avoid this practice.

But it appears that all of this worry and extra work may have been in vain. Just yesterday, a court found that an early music locker service, MP3tunes, which uses a de-duplicating process, “is precisely the type of system routinely protected by the DMCA safe harbor(s).” This outcome represents an understanding of copyright law more in line with how technology actually works, and avoids an absurd result where a music locker needs to waste server space by storing thousands of copies of identical files. This means more efficient music locker services, which is good news for music fans and for companies coming up with new and better ways to give those fans access to music they already own.

The opinion in the Capitol Records vs. MP3tunes case contained other good news (EFF filed an amicus brief in this case earlier this year). For example, the court made clear that the music locker service—whether it de-dupes or not—is like any online service provider (OSP) and, therefore, is entitled to the DMCA safe harbor protections as long as it complies with other DMCA requirements.

(more…)

Green Day Defeats Legal Claim Over Concert Video Backdrop

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by an artist who claimed that the band Green Day used an unauthorized reproduction of his art as a concert backdrop. The judge found that the band’s use of the copyrighted work was “transformative” in a decision that continues to show just how tough it is to pin down “fair use” rules, except on a case-by-case basis.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Coca-Cola Music aims to become “established music brand”

Coca-Cola aims to make its music marketing platform an “established music brand” in its own right, pitching it against companies such as iTunes and MySpace.

The music programme – which forms a part of Coca-Cola’s overall marketing strategy – will target teenagers, through collaborations with artists, record labels and technology companies, as it looks to double the entire company’s revenue to more than $200bn (£122bn) by 2020.

MarketingWeek (full story)

A Village Person Tests the Copyright Law

The prefab, gaudily costumed 1970s group the Village People and its big hit “Y.M.C.A.” are enduring symbols of the disco era. But now this campy and eternally popular song has become the centerpiece of what could be a significant test of copyright law.

The New York Times (full story)

Record Industry Braces for Artists’ Battles Over Song Rights

Since their release in 1978, hit albums like Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” Billy Joel’s “52nd Street,” the Doobie Brothers’ “Minute by Minute,” Kenny Rogers’s “Gambler” and Funkadelic’s “One Nation Under a Groove” have generated tens of millions of dollars for record companies. But thanks to a little-noted provision in United States copyright law, those artists — and thousands more — now have the right to reclaim ownership of their recordings, potentially leaving the labels out in the cold.

The New York Times (full story)

Ghostface Killah Sues Universal Music, Hits Back At ‘Iron Man’ Composer

Ghostface Killah is making a renewed effort to collect full royalties for his work as a member of the Wu Tang Clan, at the same time he’s fending off a lawsuit brought by a Hollywood composer who objects to the way the hip hop artist sampled the “Iron Man Theme” for a 2000 solo album.

The Hollywood Reporter (full story)

Hilarious/Sad: Rapper Sued by Waffle House Over the Track, “Waffle House”…

If a rapper made a song in honor of your restaurant, would you sue? Even if it had the possibility of making you a mandatory afterparty spot for a generation?  Well, after Florida rapper J.R. Bricks started buzzing with the afterparty track, “Waffle House,” he received a surprising letter from Waffle House, Inc.

digital music news (full story)

David Cassidy goes after ‘Partridge Family’ fortune

Cassidy told CNN that Sony Corp. has failed to pay him “a fortune” for what he’s owed for merchandise from the show.

“It’s just ludicrous and unfair and wrong. It’s greed,” the 61-year-old actor said.

CNN (full story)

Kings Of Leon Management Issuing Questionable DMCA Takedowns To Stop Clips Of On Stage Problems?

…it’s possible that some of the videos include clips of copyrighted songs, but the whole thing certainly seems pretty questionable, and looks like an attempt to stifle the video of what happened. Assuming that most of the videos only included a bit of music, but focused on Caleb’s statements, it seems like there would also be strong fair use claims.

TechDirt (full story)

Legal Warfare Breaks Out Between Producer T-Pain and Autotune Maker

A once profitable business venture between producer T–Pain and Antares Technologies has ended in a lawsuit over the rapper/producer’s association with the company’s popular “Autotune” effect.

AllHipHop (full story)

Future of Music Coalition to Launch Survey on Artist Revenue Streams

The Future of Music Coalition is undertaking a project that will answer two basic questions: what percentage of musicians’ income comes from each possible revenue source and how has that changed over the last ten years? From September 6 to October 28, FMC will collect online responses to the survey which aims to assess and quantify all the ways an artist can make money – from concerts to publishing to related day jobs.

Billboard (full story)

Capitol v. Thomas-Rasset Verdict Unconstitutional

On Friday, a federal judge slashed the verdict awarded  by a jury against illegal downloader Jammie Thomas-Rasset last November.

This decision brings a mix of good news and bad news for copyright owners. It also represents a somewhat striking departure from judicial deference to Congress’s authority to set damages in civil cases by statute.

To put it another way, this decision and last year’s decision against Joel Tenenbaum represent the first time in history that a US court has found a substantive due process limit on damages set by statute.

Copyhype (full story)