Pink Floyd have been in court with EMI, their record label of 43 years, over what level of royalties they should be paid for digital sales of their music, and as to whether tracks from their concept albums can be sold as singles. The Times reports that Pink Floyd have won their case on both counts, and now recover the right to package their music as they see fit, and to be paid a higher rate for online sales, although exactly how much hasn’t been disclosed. This exclusive, music first approach is typical of the band, and totally at odds with EMI’s cash-hungry stance at the moment; obviously the boys don’t need the money as much as the label does at the moment…
Having admitted in the Financial Times that his investment in EMI has shed around £2 billion in value since the 2007 purchase, more information is being made public about the radical solutions that Terra Firma’s head has been considering – including splitting the company into it’s recorded music and publishing arms. This would have the effect of protecting the publishing arm in the event that EMI is unable to meet the financial requirements placed upon it by lender CitiGroup (with whom Terra Firma, EMI’s owner, is currently contending a lawsuit over whether or not they were lied to in the buying process). If the various stratagems that are being discussed can’t be enacted, and EMI fails to meet it’s responsibilities, then we will likely see the breakup of the massive record company into it’s constituent parts, or a merger into one of the other big 4 labels.
There are “strong indications” that Conrad Murray, who Jackson hired to be his personal physician in advance of his strenuous ‘This Is It Tour’, will be charged in a Los Angeles court this week. Murray and his lawyer have travelled to L.A. from his practice in Houston, TX and speculation is rife. No charge is currently scheduled, but involuntary manslaughter seems likely to be the case that Dr. Murray will have to answer. As usual with the sadly departed Mr. Jackson’s affairs there is no shortage of wild rumour surrounding the case.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset may have caught a break, depending on whether the US courts can agree with one another on the amount of damages appropriate to each breach of music copyright. Originally, the consortium of record labels was awarded damages of $80,000 per track involved in their case (the plaintiffs only sought damages for 24 out of an alleged 1,702 tracks – $136,160,000, before you get your calculator out), but this was redacted by a certain Chief Judge Davis to a mere $2,250, reducing the total damage payment from $1.92 million to $54,000.
Despite the fact that this reduction is at odds with a statute that imposes a much higher limit of $150,000, it seems that this isn’t good enough for the defending legal team, and they’ve moved for a new trial. This exposes them to a new award for damages, which in turn would be subject to the same sort of adjustment… This repeating, ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ style allocation is bound to go on for a while, depending on the pressure from the recording industry, who have equal determination to, and presumably deeper pockets than the defendant, but whatever sum the clicker stops on, it will have very far reaching repercussions for the future of the fight against piracy in the States.
Remember back in October, when EMI were negotiating a deal with Grooveshark, then changed their mind and decided to sue them, then broke off the pursuit of their lawsuit and instead signed a licensing agreement with them? The press releases (via All things digital) went something like this:
1:
Recently, EMI Records chose to abandon the template we’ve built with the help of other major copyright holders and opted for their traditional intimidation tactic of filing a lawsuit as a negotiating tool. We find the use of this negotiating strategy counterproductive, as Grooveshark has been willing to conclude an agreement with EMI Records that is economically sustainable for both EMI Records and a start-up company the size of Grooveshark.
2:
“EMI Music and EMI Music Publishing have collaborated with us to create a mutually sustainable deal which represents the future of digital music,” says Grooveshark CEO Sam Tarantino. “We will continue to deliver the best music service on the Internet to our users, and we will expand our capacity to strengthen fan-to-artist connections through our technology.”
“We think services like Grooveshark offer great music discovery options for fans,” said Mark Piibe, EMI Music’s Global Head of Digital Business Development. ”In turn, Grooveshark offers a new revenue stream for our artists and will help us learn more about how we can better connect different types of fans with artists.”
The mixed feelings about Grooveshark’s operation seem to extend outside the EMI boardroom – Universal are now suing Grooveshark for copyright infringement on some big artists from their pre 1972 recordings, including Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5, The Who and Chuck Berry. Why they’ve chosen these particular artists to make a case on is unclear, but the case is seemingly strong: if Universal are withholding the copyright to the tracks that Grooveshark is playing then they have no choice but to either prevent access to the tracks that are in question, and make reparations for past breach that are acceptable to the label, or fight the court case. The long term effects of this case will be interesting to see. Grooveshark have been allowed to operate relatively unmolested by the big labels while other services, like Seeqpod, have been forced out, so why have Universal decided to apply pressure at this point? Are they thinking like Grooveshark suspect, that they can bully their way into a deal with the streaming service without having to give away a rock bottom streaming royalty rate?
We picked up on Blue Beat’s strange decision to start streaming otherwise unavailable tracks from the Beatles’ back catalogue without the right’s owners permission, but it turns out their infringements are much more widespread. As music business news site Hypebot has just reported, they also claim to have the rights to sell music from AC/DC and Dan The Automator right through to Frank Zappa and ZZ Top. A totally spurious claim, based on this piece of US copyright legislation:
17 U.S.C. § 114(b):
“The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (1) of section 106 is limited to the right to duplicate the sound recording in the form of phonorecords or copies that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording. The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (2) of section 106 is limited to the right to prepare a derivative work in which the actual sounds fixed in the sound recording are rearranged, remixed, or otherwise altered in sequence or quality. The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1) and (2) of section 106 do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording.”
A piece of law designed to allow people to make different tracks using parts of the original piece – sampling the Amen break [1:45], or nicking a riff off Labi Siffre [2:10], but not intended to cover what Blue Beat have done, which is to re-record the song pretty much wholesale. Their defence [via Ben Sheffner's blog] is pinned on their hopes that their copyrighted PsychoAcoustic process creates a new piece of intellectual property, that they own… basically they contend that some hocus-pocus like changing the file from a WAV to an MP3, playing it on a My First Boombox and re-recording through a microphone in a glass of milk, or some other magical process of transformation that ends up with the same noise at the end, will be enough to transform their ‘version’ into a derivative work rather than just a rip off. Unlikely. If anyone out there was thinking of it, we’d ask you not to try and upload anything similar to our digital music distribution service. The precise details of why BlueBeat consider their process to constitute a method of creating a new artefact aren’t online yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they say in their next filing on the 10th of Nov.
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