Posts Tagged ‘Music Law’
Law Students Win Downloading Victory; Corporations Contemplate Political Speech; Gaga Trademarks Self
Posted on February 25th, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • 1 Comment
Students from Franklin Pierce Law Center’s clinics are declaring victory for their client in a music downloading suit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Students from the Consumer and Commercial Law and Intellectual Property and Transaction Clinics aided a New Hampshire woman, Mavis Roy, in reopening a default judgment lodged against her for allegedly illegally downloading hundreds of songs. The case was then set for trial and the students spent months preparing. After Roy’s counsel obtained an expert report which “seriously challenged RIAA’s evidence linking the downloading activity to Roy’s computer,” the two sides reached a settlement highly favorable to Roy — the suit was dismissed with prejudice and she paid no damages. Thanks to @piercelaw for the tip.
As you might expect, law firms are already advising corporate clients about how to direct corporate spending to political campaigns in the wake of Citizens United v. FEC. According to K & L Gates, they should proceed with caution and keep a low profile. For more information on Citizens United, see our earlier post, “Citizens United v. FEC: Eight Unanswered Questions.”
Gawker reports that Lady Gaga has applied for a trademark in her name for use in conjunction with an extremely wide range of products, including gift cards, tank tops, and pens. The application is here.
Google Deletes Music Blogs – What’s Going On? (Plus: How to Respond to a DMCA Takedown Notice)
Posted on February 12th, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • 4 Comments
The scandal already has a name – Blogocide 2010. In the first week of February, Google deleted several music blogs entirely for alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Bloggers reacted with outrage. As I write this, Google has just posted an explanation of their actions, which specifies, “[w]hen we receive multiple DMCA complaints about the same blog, and have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorized manner, we will remove the blog.” Google has restored one blog which Google concedes did not receive notification of DMCA complaints, but the others remain deleted as of the evening of February 11th.
If you’re a music blogger who uses Blogger or any other remote hosting service, you may be wondering if you will be the next to lose your blog. You may have already received a DMCA takedown notice. Below, we discuss the chain of events that likely led up to Google’s deletions of the offending blogs, as well as what you can do if your blog receives a DMCA takedown notice.
How Does This Happen?
The chain of events doesn’t start with Google. DMCA notifications are sent by copyright holders or their representatives to entities hosting allegedly infringing content. In this case, Google owns Blogger, which hosts the content of the music blogs, so copyright holders send notifications to Google regarding particular Blogger accounts. Then Google contacts the individual Blogger account holders and says “we received a notification that Content Item X potentially infringes on someone else’s copyright, so take it down or else.”
Some people seem to believe that the DMCA itself is an organization. It’s not — it’s a law. As seen in the following post to Blogger’s complaint forum by Bill Lipold, the owner of the deleted blog IRockCleveland, the organization seeking to enforce the DMCA in his case was the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a multinational lobbying organization which represents record labels in pursuing anti-piracy enforcement on a worldwide basis.
In Lipold’s case, Google forwarded him approximately three takedown notices in fall 2009. Lipold seems to have ignored them until his blog was deleted, at which point he posted a complaint on the Blogger support forum. In his post, he informs Google that he believed he had permission to post an mp3 from the band BLK JKS and posts an email from the record label Secretly Canadian, whose publicist expresses confusion about the takedown notice and apologizes.
Looking at the IFPI’s roster of labels, it appears Secretly Canadian is not an IFPI member. However, BLK JKS’s album on Secretly Canadian is distributed by the Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA), a distributor which is 95% owned by Warner Music Group (WMG). Warner Music Group is an IFPI member. The other two artists about which Lipold received DMCA notices, Spindrift and Jay Reatard, also have releases distributed by ADA.
In other words, the likely chain of events was as follows: indie label’s publicist sends out a promo mp3 to a blogger. Blogger posts mp3, as publicist intends. Indie label’s major distributor reports blogger’s posting of mp3 to blogger’s ISP as infringement. Blogger’s ISP deletes blogger’s blog.
They have a word for this sort of thing. However, it appears that Lipold made an important mistake of his own: he ignored the takedown notices simply because he believed he had permission to post the mp3s he posted. Blogger, ADA and the IFPI, on the other hand, likely did not know that Lipold had permission, presumably because Lipold’s posts were not reviewed by a human being, but by a bot crawling the web looking for infringing music files. Although he may have been entirely in the right legally, Lipold did not take steps to address and clarify the dispute until it was too late. Now his blog is strumming a digital harp in Internet heaven.
Why is Google Being So Mean?
Google is not being mean. Google is trying to avoid secondary liability for the copyright infringement of others by demonstrating that Google responds to reports of potentially infringing material on its own site (Blogger) as quickly as possible. In other words, Google is trying to avoid being sued itself for allowing copyright infringement to continue after Google itself has been notified of illicit activity. Google is simply trying to protect itself. It is most likely not targeting any particular blog out of malice.
I Got a DMCA Takedown. What Can I Do?
Lipold and his fellow bloggers should have taken affirmative steps to respond to the takedown notices and protect themselves. Below, we’ll discuss what you can do if you find yourself in a similar situation.
DISCLAIMER: The following is meant only to sketch out potential courses of action. It is not legal advice; please do not rely upon it as if it were.
1) Send a counter-notification ASAP. The DMCA includes its own means of responding to a DMCA takedown notice — the DMCA counter-notification, a form in which a notice recipient explains why the notice is in error. Google’s own instructions for creating and sending a counter-notification can be found here. Note that you have to assert a legitimate reason why the takedown was in error. Alternatively, Chilling Effects, which is a clearinghouse for information about DMCA takedowns, has an automated form here which you can use to create a counter-notification. Note that you must submit your counter-notification by snail mail or fax. Don’t wait to respond — it appears that the blogs targeted in Blogocide 2010 may not have responded promptly to the DMCA notices forwarded by Google. When Google sent notices and got no response, it felt it had no choice but to proceed as if the offending blogs were posting material without authorization.
2) Contact a lawyer. If you are really not sure what is going on, talk to a lawyer who is familiar with copyright and the DMCA. He or she can advise you how to proceed and prepare correspondence to record labels, ISPs and other parties on your behalf. You might have to pay your attorney for a few hours of work, but you’ve put a lot of time and energy into your blog.
3) Alternatively, try contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF is a public interest organization which works on behalf of electronic freedom and privacy. If you have a meritorious claim, the EFF may be able to put you in touch with a lawyer who can assist you on a pro bono basis. They host the Takedown Hall of Shame and offer very good advice on dealing with Youtube DMCA takedowns which can be applied to other takedown scenarios as well.
Questlove Explains TV Music Licensing
Posted on February 2nd, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • No Comments
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is the drummer and bandleader of the hip-hop group the Roots, currently on TV five nights a week as the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on NBC.
Playing in a band that must perform live music on television for a huge audience every night has given Questlove some inside knowledge about the complicated process of arranging rights clearance for the songs the Roots play as personalized “walk-on music” to introduce celebrity guests. As you might expect, playing even a few seconds of someone else’s song on network television can be quite expensive. (In a February 2009 interview, Questlove explained that part of the reason the Roots were hired was because they could write original music for walk-ons, allowing NBC to save on licensing fees.)
Questlove recently took to Twitlonger to explain just how expensive these things can get, as well as letting me know in advance what my walk-on song will be if I ever get on Late Night:
one day i gave my last minute clearance list in before a show only to be told mid show i couldn’t use “cry me a river” for joan rivers because justin timberlake charged an enormous rate. i “think” he is the only non dead/non rock and roll hall of famer to charge this strange rate….which kills me because the second we get any Richard on the show i wont even be allowed to do “Dick In A Box”…
Read the rest of Questlove’s post here.
Tuesday Afternoon Legal Information Coverage Explosion
Posted on January 26th, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • 1 Comment
(Left: A page from the Center for the Study of the Public Domain’s “Bound by Law” comic book.)
This was originally supposed to be the Monday Afternoon Legal Information Coverage Explosion (“M.A.L.I.C.E.”), but somehow Monday afternoon turned into Tuesday morning. What’s with the acronym, you ask? I’ve been reviewing criminal law for the North Carolina bar exam and I’ve got mnemonics, acronyms and altered mental states on the brain.
Anyway, here are some interesting news stories, opinion pieces and academic papers that came across our desks in the past week.
Our former professor James Boyle (@thepublicdomain) alerts us to The Public Domain Manifesto and to the latest installment of his always-excellent Financial Times column (registration required), entitled “Obama’s Mixed Record on Tech Policy.” Boyle notes that the U.S’s decision to stand up at the World Intellectual Property Organization’s recent summit in support of certain limited copyright exceptions intended to aid the visually impaired has been seen as a small victory for copyright sanity, but that “[w]hen the decision not to throw the blind under the copyright juggernaut counts as enlightened policy, it tells one a lot.”
Our friends the Future of Music Coalition have information for you about the ins and outs of the LiveNation / Ticketmaster merger and the progress of an antitrust suit alleging a digital download price-fixing scheme between the Big 4 major labels.
Powered by 
CSS