Lawdit Music Blog

A recent report by the office of communications (Ofcom) and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) shows that about 18% of internet users above the age of 12 “accessed digital entertainment media using an illegal service”. This is a slight increase from 16% of users which were reported to have done so in the previous quarterly report.

It should be noted that the exact phrase used in the article is that there was an “increase in the access of digital entertainment using an illegal service”. From what I can tell, this does not necessarily mean that the people accessing the media are pirating. I am purely guessing here, but if you access intellectual property, which you already have the right to consume, through an illegal service it is probably not illegal- and even if it is, it shouldn’t be. For example, if person X buys a DVD from a store but decides that he wants a copy of it for his computer and thus downloads it “illegally” for his computer- even though he accessed digital entertainment media using an illegal service, his action itself surely can’t be illegal.

I do appreciate that in reality it is highly unlikely that there are many people who access digital media through an illegal service while having legal right to the intellectual property.

Excuse my slight tangent.

The point I wanted to reenforce through this blogpost is one which I have had to bitterly accept throughout the last month and a half or so since starting this blog. I always held the view that the answer to piracy was simply to provide a simple alternative to the illegal services available: piracy is not an issue of price but of convenience. I used to dismissed all attempts by the government and corporate bigwigs to fight piracy as silly and misplaced. While some proposals, like the one to install ransomware on our computers, support my original view, studies like this make me sympathise heavily with the music industry.

The report by the IPO and Ofcom show that almost a third of users who download and stream music online do so illegally. Moreover, out of the 386 million digital media pirated 280 million of them were music. Now, this wouldn’t be so much a problem if it was 2002, but its 2013 and we have a plethora of legal streaming and downloading options available to chose from and yet piracy will not go down. So I have to begrudgingly accept that piracy may not be combated simply by providing an easier alternative to the illegal services available and maybe we do need some form of proportional punishment in our legal system for pirates.

For the record: It is not lost on me that the numbers we have received from the report may have been processed to show what the IPO and Ofcom want us to see. Furthermore it is possible that there are one or two variables which have been conveniently left out to show us the picture we currently have. However, as far as I am aware there is absolutely nothing to even slightly suggest that there has been some clever mathematical maneuvering on the part of the IPO or Ofcom.

Source:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/may/28/music-tv-film-piracy-uk-internet

The United States Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, has confirmed earlier this month that she intends to provide a full public performance right for sound recordings. This in turn will require broadcasters (including radio broadcasters) to pay music artist(s) a fee for everytime their song is broadcasted. Although in reality most of this money will prbably go straight to the label.
Funny enough, we can thank Pandora, an online music streaming service, for the change. Even before this measure will come into practice, Pandora was already required to pay record labels and publishers around fifty percent of its revenue. They have since been in negotiations with the music industry to lower this rate. In an attempt to get Congress to interject Pandora pointed in a Senate hearing the obvious inconsistancy in them being required to pay a boistorous amount to the labels and publishers while other broadcasters paid nothing.
While in the end the Government did intervene, this was probably not the result that Pandora was hoping for.
If implemented, this change may have some unintended consequences. While at first, it may result in more revenue for the artists and their label, it may be argued that over time this fee may deter a broadcaster from playing the artist’s songs. While the mainstream artist’s may not be heavily affected, independant artists who, even in this age and time often rely on the radio to spread their popularity, will be.
However, this is on the assumption that independant artists will charge the same amount as the mainstream artists to broadcast their music. In reality it is unlikely that most independant artist will charge a radio broadcaster a fee. This may actually encourage broadcasters to promote the independant artists more than they do now in order to keep their costs low.

Source:

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2013/20130604copyrightoffice

The song, Happy Birthday to You, is often considered the most recognised song in the English language (how one would verify this, I don’t know). The song is copyrighted by Warner/Chappell Music Inc, a division of the Warner Music Group, who have been known to ask anywhere from 1,500 to 10,000 USD for the use of the song. However, all this might soon change.

A new law suit has been filed earlier this month by Jennifer Nelson, a New York filmmaker, claiming that the song is public domain. The law suit also demands that Warner Music Group pay back the millions of dollars they have received in royalties and licensing fees from the song.

Happy Birthday to You, is actually an adaptation from the song Good Morning Dear Children, written by Patty and Mildred J. Hill in 1893. The songs share the same melody, but the lyrics are very different. The law suit claims that there is evidence to suggest that the song was actually copyrighted by a school in the State of Indiana in 1901 (ending no later than 1921), and that the copyright Warner/Chappell Music Inc owns is narrowly limited to a specific piano arrangement of the song published in 1935.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/14/happy-birthday-lawsuit-copyright-warner

http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/14/4429412/happy-birthday-lawsuit-demands-warner-music-pay-back-royalites

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2013/06/14/class-action-suit-aims-to-strip-warner-of-happy-birthday-copyright/

In my previous blog posts I mention a lot of different ways in which the music and entertainment industry is trying to protect their intellectual property. These range from providing a better user experience to straightforward banning of websites which infringe copyright. Late last month, BoingBoing.net spotted something in the report submitted to the US government by the Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property which could be considered as one of the more… “unique” methods in protecting intellectual property.

The idea behind the proposal is essentially a malware system would be installed on a system and to determine whether the user was a pirate (It is unclear in the report how it would do so). If the malware system does determine the user to be a pirate, the user’s entire system is locked down and can only be unlocked if the user turns himself into the police.

Aside from this method being a potential violation of privacy, the list of complications and headaches this could potentially cause everyday users is almost endless. I have this horrid vision of myself trying to load up one of my old CDs onto my computer only to have the installed malware lock my computer down because I’m playing MP3 files from a source it does not recognise. Once again, it seems like the music and entertainment industry are just throwing a bunch of ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Link to BoingBoing article:

http://boingboing.net/2013/05/26/us-entertainment-industry-to-c.html

At its annual world wide developer conference Apple presented the much anticipated update to their mobile and tablet operating system iOS 7. One of the major changes brought to the table with iOS 7 is a new feature called iTunes Radio. iTunes Radio is a service which allows iOS users to stream music from the iTunes store directly without the need for purchasing the songs.

On the face of it, this new feature does not seem very significant. Other streaming services, such as Spotify, have been around for quite a while now. However, none of these services have a big name or brand like Apple behind it. While Apple does have a history of innovation, I would submit that in recent years it has shown a consistent pattern popularising already existing concepts rather than innovating. For example while 7-8 inch tablets existed before the iPad mini they were not as widely accepted in the open market until its release.

How is this relevant to music law? Simple. Like the iPad mini, Apple’s introduction of a streaming service will likely popularise the concept of a streaming music as a whole. The popularisation of streaming music may potentially give pirates a free, and thus viable, alternative to infringing copyright while still allowing the content creators to gain some revenue through advertisements and/or subscription fees.

That being said, it can be argued that the popularisation of streaming services will have very little impact on piracy. Streaming music while not fully popular in the mass market is still relatively well known. Thus, practically speaking, those who chose to steal music online are likely to be internet-savvy enough to know about streaming services which already exist.

This should be an interesting space to watch.

We live in an age where anybody with a decent laptop is able to create their own music. This caused a rise not only in the independant and amature production of music, but also the rise in mashups and remixes. For those of you not familiar with the terms “mashup” and “remix”: “mashup” is used commonly to refer to when two or more songs are combined to create a new song; a remix is simply an alternative version of a song, sometimes with different beats or with sounds added to it.

Without the proper permission, both a remix and a mashup can potentially result in various copyright infringements. Once again, we can see the issue in music law with the need to balance the protection of intellectual property with the need allow innovation and creative expression.

As it stands, the policies of most Governments and public organisations leans toward the protection of intellectual property. Even content distributing websites, where the majority of artists use to share their creations, tend to lean towards the protection of intellectual property. This can be seen with Youtube(youtube.com), and more recently with Soundcloud(soundcloud.com). Soundcloud is a relatively new website, and it is a platform by which most artists ( specifically digital) share their music. Soundcloud has recently changed their policy in their user agreement to allow themselves to remove copyrighted material and ban users who infringe copyright It is policies like this which have, and will continue to, hinder the internet’s ability to be a platform for sharing innovations and creative expressions.

This past Wednesday, on the 22nd of May, the commission of theft of American intellectual property reported that the Chinese government’s policies causes the United States to lose upwards of 200 billion US dollars annually from the theft of intellectual property. The report also mentions India, Venezuela, and Russia as the other major nations causing the United States loss.

The report points the finger mainly at cyber criminals, although does acknowledge that traditional methods of copyright theft (such as bribery) are by no means antiquated.

The question now arises as what the United States’ Government should do to protect the intellectual property of their industries. As it currently stands, it seems to me that the United States has seemingly exhausted its options in regards to the methods of protecting intellectual property (without fundamentally breaching the right to privacy).

This issue may simply be one of politics rather than one of intellectual property. The United States may put the pressure on foreign governments by making sure they are doing what they can do to stop the theft of intellectual property. However, as more of the developing world starts getting access to easier ways to steal intellectual property (namely the internet) it is clear that something must be done.

Sources:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/470521/20130523/china-hacking-intellectual-property-theft-cyber-crime.htm

http://www.stripes.com/protect-us-intellectual-property-from-foreign-theft-1.222544

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578405-it-time-retaliate-against-cyber-thieves-fighting-chinas-hackers?zid=317&ah=8a47fc455a44945580198768fad0fa41