digital phonorecord delivery

A new Chief Copyright Royalty Judge of the Copyright Royalty Board has just been named by the Librarian of Congress.  According to the Press Release announcing his appointment, David Shaw will fill that position after having previously served as an administrative law judge on the International Trade Commission for over 10 years.  There, he heard complex cases dealing with detailed financial matters – experience that sounds relevant to the kinds of cases he will be deciding on the CRB.  The Copyright Royalty Judges decide cases determining the marketplace value of music when  setting royalty rates, and that look at the relative value of programming when deciding the distribution of cable royalties to program copyright holders.  In addition to ITC experience, Shaw was a judge at the Social Security Administration and, according to his biography, worked in the General Counsel’s office at NPR early in his career.  With the appointment of this new Chief Judge, we thought that it would be worth looking at some of the specific areas in which the CRB makes decisions that affect media companies.

The CRB is principally charged with rates and distributions for copyrights governed by a “statutory licenses.”  A statutory license is created by Congress when it is believed that individual negotiations between copyright holders and copyright users would either be unduly complex so as to be almost unworkable or where an efficient market would not otherwise exist.  Essentially, the statutory license means that the copyright owner must license the work that they own – they cannot restrict its use – if the user pays the royalties set by law or established by the CRB and abides by the conditions for use set out in the law.  See our article here about music statutory licenses and our articles here and here on some of the issues with the TV statutory licenses.  The conditions of use are often carefully restricted so as to only cover very specific uses under the statutory license (see our article here on the conditions placed on the use of music under the statutory license for webcasting – the public performance right for sound recordings used by noninteractive services discussed below).Continue Reading New Copyright Royalty Board Chief Judge Named – Looking at the Issues Considered by the CRB of Importance to Media Companies

This week, the US House of Representatives passed the Music Modernization Act. While widely supported among many digital media companies providing on-demand subscription music services as well as by many in the music industry, the bill seemingly has not received the publicity that has been afforded to past music royalty legislation. That may be, in part, because there were few who adamantly opposed the provisions of the bill, as evidenced by a unanimous House vote – something that never would have happened had any significant portion of the music industry opposed the bill. But this moment of togetherness may be, in part, due to the somewhat limited (though nevertheless very important) issues that it addresses.

The Modernization of Music Act began as a legislative effort primarily to address the issues raised under Section 115 of the Copyright Act – the section dealing with what are often called “mechanical royalties” – the royalties paid to publishing companies for the copyright in the “musical work,” i.e. the musical composition. In other words, these royalties are paid to the copyright holder of the words and music to a song (sometimes the composer but more often a publishing company) – not to the artist who actually records that song. The provisions of Section 115 were first adopted to allow artists to record songs once a song has been recorded and publically released in the United States – to record a “cover” of the original recordings – provided that compensation set by agreement between the user and the copyright holder is paid or, absent a voluntary agreement, that a royalty set by the Copyright Royalty Board is paid to the copyright holder (see our post here on the last CRB decision on those rates). That mechanical royalty was later expanded to cover “digital phonorecord deliveries” (“DPDs”) – the making of digital copies of the musical composition made in the context of a distribution and delivery of the song to individual consumers. Through caselaw and industry practice, DPDs were interpreted to include the need for royalties not just when a digital download is made, but also when an on-demand or interactive stream of a song is delivered to a consumer.
Continue Reading House of Representatives Passes Music Modernization Act – Looking for Clarity on Mechanical Royalties, Pre-1972 Sound Recordings and Other Music Rights Issues

Last month, we wrote about the proposed settlement on "mechanical royalties" under Section 115 of the Copyright Act. These royalties are paid when "reproductions" are made of a musical composition.  In the analog world, these were most commonly paid by a record company to a music publisher for the rights to use a musical composition when one

The broadcast and music trade press brought news of a settlement between music companies and digital media services regrading digital music royalties.  Some press reports jumped to the conclusion that the decision had something to do with the royalty rates that Internet radio companies pay SoundExchange for streaming their music on the Internet.  Others expressed disappointment that it did not seem to address that issue at all.  In fact, the reason that the settlement had nothing to do with webcasting was because it was a settlement of a Copyright Royalty Board proceeding involving a totally different right – essentially the right to reproduce a the musical work, i.e. the words and music to a song – not any public performance right that is involved in Internet radio streaming.

As we have written before (including the last time a similar settlement was announced), webcasters pay their royalties principally under Section 114 of the Copyright Act, which sets up a "statutory license" requiring that all copyright holders in a "sound recording" (a recording of a song by a particular artist) make their songs available for public performance to any digital music service that meets certain criteria – including principally that their service is a non-interactive one, where listeners cannot pick the particular song that they want to hear.  In exchange for this right, digital music services pay a fee set by the Copyright Royalty Board.  These fees cover liabilities for music use in a process where a service generates a product that goes from the service to many people, much like radio does in the traditional world, without making any sort of lasting digital copy that would be akin, in the physical world, to a CD or record.  The settlement that was just announced deals with rights that like those paid, in the physical world, by a record company to a music publisher for using a musical composition in a record or CD that the record company is recording with a particular artist, not with the public performance right.Continue Reading Music Royalty Settlement Announced on Mechanical Royalties – Not A Decision on Webcasting Rates

Today, the National Music Publishers Association ("NMPA"), DiMA, the RIAA and other music publishing groups issued a press release announcing a settlement of certain aspects of the current Copyright Royalty Board proceeding to determine the royalties due under Section 115 of the Copyright Act for the mechanical royalty for the reproduction and distribution

Broadcasters and other digital media companies have recently been focused on the royalties that are to be charged by the record labels for public performance of a sound recording in a digital transmission (under the Section 114 compulsory license administered by SoundExchange).  In a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued this week, the Copyright Office tentatively concludes that there could be yet another royalty due for streaming – a royalty to be paid to music publishers for the reproductions of the musical compositions being made in the streaming process under Section 115 of the Copyright Act.  This notice was released just as the Copyright Royalty Board is concluding its proceeding to determine the rates that are to be paid for the Section 115 royalty.  While there have been reports of a settlement of some portions of that proceeding, the details of any settlement is not public, so whether it even contemplated noninteractive streaming as part of the agreement is unknown.

How did the Copyright Office reach its tentative conclusion?  First, some background.  The Office for years has been struggling with the question of just what the section 115 royalty covered.  Traditionally, the royalty was paid by record companies to the music publishers for rights to use the compositions in the pressing of records.  This was referred to as the "mechanical royalty" paid for the rights to reproduce and distribute the composition used in a making copies of a sound recording (a record, tape or CD).  These copies were referred to as "phonorecords."  However, in the digital world, things get more complicated, as there is not necessarily a tangible copy being made when there is a reproduction of a sound recording.  Thus, Congress came up with the concept of a Digital Phonorecord Delivery (a "DPD") as essentially the equivalent of the tangible phonorecord.  But just what is a DPD?Continue Reading Copyright Office Issues Notice of Proposed Rulemaking That Could Make Section 115 Royalty Applicable to Internet Radio