Prior to 1972, no federal copyright protection existed for sound recordings. Congress rectified that situation by extending copyright to any recordings that were fixed on…
Two exclusive rights of copyright are at the heart of the worldwide business of music. They involve musical compositions and sound recordings, the rights of…
Sampling has been controversial from the very start. Supporters of the practice argue that artists sample songs they love and build on them to create their…
2013 marked the first year that sound recording and musical composition copyrights could revert from labels and publishers, respectively, to artists and songwriters. The Copyright…
“All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It, and he said as much in other plays. The public performance of creative…
In the years since the rise and subsequent fall of Napster, the distribution of recorded music has, for better or worse, become primarily about maximizing…
For more than a year now the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet has been conducting a series of hearings as…
In May of 1787, the top political figures of a fledgling United States met in Philadelphia to draft a Constitution. They judged artistic expression and…
On March 20, 2013, following an address at Columbia Law School entitled “The Next Great Copyright Act”, U.S. Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante appeared before…
On November 1, 2013, all European Union Member States were required to make legally effective the Directive 2011/77/EU. The Directive, an amendment of the 2006…
Recent negotiations between Clear Channel Communications and Warner Music Group have sent shockwaves throughout the recording industry. For the first time on a major scale,…
In a recent court case between ASCAP, the oldest PRO in the United States, and Pandora, the first and most storied music Internet radio station,…
Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” was the first single by an unknown artist to enter the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number one. Here we examine how…
In past years, music has firmly established itself as a free good in the minds of many consumers, making it increasingly difficult to monetize and…