YouTube Buys Company That Processes Music Royalties

In an effort to streamline its often complex relations with music publishers, YouTube has acquired RightsFlow, an upstart company in New York that processes royalties for the music industry.

Through the deal, YouTube will gain a system for processing royalty payments to tens of thousands of publishers — the companies that represent songwriters — whenever music is included in a video that is played on the site.

[via MediaDecoder]

Musicians Can Press UMG for Ringtone Money

A federal judge rejected Universal Music Group's attempt to toss a class action over ringtone royalties allegedly owed to musicians led by the late "Superfreak" star Rick James and heavy metal star Rob Zombie.

[via Courthouse News Service]

BT considering music industry request to block The Pirate Bay

BT Group PLC said Friday it is considering a request by the music industry to block The Pirate Bay website, a major file-sharing site that enables unlawful downloads of music and games. TotalTelecom reports.

The BPI, which represents U.K. record labels, has written to the telecommunications provider, asking it to block The Pirate Bay voluntarily. If BT doesn't block the website, BPI will head to court.

The move follows a recent U.K. High Court order that BT block access to pirate website Newzbin2, which makes unlawful copies of films and television programs available, alongside other content, following legal action by an association representing six major movie studios.

Read full article.

Rapper Chuck D sues Universal for $100m

American rapper author and producer Chuck D claims Universal owes its artists and producers "hundreds of millions of dollars" from the sale of downloads and ringtones, citing a major ruling from earlier this year.

... Chuck D says Universal pays just $80.33 in royalties for every 1,000 song downloads, and $49.89 for every 1,000 ringtones; he contends these sales should be treated as licences, not unit sales, boosting figures from $80.33 to $315.85 and from $49.89 to $660.

Read full article in The Guardian.

Universal Music Loses Bid to Dismiss Class Action Over Digital Revenue

A federal judge in California is allowing a big class action lawsuit to go forward against Universal Music Group that alleges the record label has underpaid royalties on digital downloads and ringtones. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

Spearheaded by Rob Zombie and the estate of Rick James, the consolidated class action seeks damages that could rise to the billions of dollars.

The lawsuit was filed in April and came on the heels of previous litigation that opened the question of how labels should be treating digital music distribution.

Read full article.

Could one music downloader change U.S. copyright law?

In the age of iTunes and an-app-for-everything, Joel Tenenbaum's battle with the music industry over illegal downloading seems as relevant as an eight-track cassette.
But it turns out the fight could produce something surprisingly enduring: a change in copyright law. Reuters reports.

Back in 2007, Tenenbaum was one of 35,000 individuals sued by Recording Industry Association of America in a legal assault meant to discourage music lovers from illegally downloading songs. While the vast majority of rogue downloaders settled their cases, only Tenenbaum and one other defendant hung on for a trial.

Over the course of the litigation, Tenenbaum's testimony earned him some notoriety -- he blamed the downloading on burglars, a foster child and his sisters before finally confessing -- but the digital-rights community continued to support his case. A friend-of-the-court brief supporting Tenenbaum's constitutional arguments was co-authored by members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lobbying group, as well as Stanford and Berkeley law school's clinics on technology and public policy. Harvard law professor Charles Nesson, founder of the school's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, took Tenenbaum on as a client and has been representing him pro bono since 2008.

Now, as Tenenbaum's case enters its next stage, those advocates see a renewed opportunity to push for an answer on how copyright laws should be enforced.

Read full article.

Music Piracy Continues to Decline Thanks to Spotify

A new report looking into online music consumption habits shows that since 2009 the number of people who pirate music has dropped by 25 percent in Sweden.

The sharp decrease coincides with a massive interest for the music streaming service Spotify. One of the main reasons why people switch to legal services is the wider range of material they can find there.

[via TorrentFreak]

Elvis Presley Estate Sues to Recover Ringtone

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the King's estate has announced a multimillion dollar lawsuit filed in Germany demanding proper payment over new media income such as ringtones, downloads and entertainment apps.

The lawsuit alleges that the iconic Elvis Presley "was unjustly exploited during his lifetime by his record company,"

Read full article.

Music Publishing Group Drops Appeal of YouTube Copyright Infringement Case

Google Inc. settled copyright- infringement claims brought by music publishers over the unauthorized use of music videos on the company’s YouTube website. Bloomberg reports.

The settlement allows music publishers to form licensing agreements with YouTube and receive royalties, the National Music Publishers Association said today in a statement announcing it was dropping its appeal of a lower-court ruling that rejected the group’s claims.

Read more.

Copyright law overhaul 'will allow fans to copy music to iPods'

Individuals will be able to legally copy music and DVDS they own on to digital devices such as iPods and computers, under sweeping changes Britain's "archaic" copyright laws.

[via The Telegraph]

PayPal joins London police bid to financially starve illegal websites

PayPal has joined a music copyright association and the City of London police department's bid to financially starve websites deemed "illegal."

When presented with sufficient evidence of unlicensed downloading from a site, the United Kingdom's PayPal branch "will require the retailer to submit proof of licensing for the music offered by the retailer," said the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's latest press release.

[via arstechnica]

Traffic light plan for online music search results

A music body wants online search results to steer fans to legal download sites, reports the BBC.

The Performing Rights Society (PRS) For Music wants search engines to show which sites offer content illegally.

Links to sites that offer legal downloads would get green tags, while links to illegal download sites would be flagged in red.

The PRS says the new system is needed as some people don't know when they're illegally downloading.

Read full article.

Are Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player Illegal?

Amazon.com made waves in March when it announced Cloud Player, a new “cloud music” service that allows users to upload their music collections for personal use. It did so without a license agreement, and the major music labels were not amused. Sony Music said it was keeping its “legal options open” as it pressured Amazon to pay up. Wired reports.

In the following weeks, two more companies announced music services of their own. Google, which has long had a frosty relationship with the labels, followed Amazon’s lead; Google Music Beta was announced without the Big Four on board. But Apple has been negotiating licenses so it can operate iCloud with the labels’ blessing.

The different strategies pursued by these firms presents a puzzle. Either Apple wasted millions of dollars on licenses it doesn’t need, or Amazon and Google are vulnerable to massive copyright lawsuits. All three are sophisticated firms that employ a small army of lawyers, so it’s a bit surprising that they reached such divergent assessments of what the law requires.

So how did it happen? And who’s right?

Apple iCloud 'legitimises' music pirates

Apple's new cloud music service has been criticised by sections of the music industry for encouraging piracy by allowing people to essentially legitimise their pirated music collections. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

... A new tool called iTunes Match has been dubbed by some as a "music pirate amnesty" and others as a way of bringing pirates into the legal music store fold.

The service scans users' hard drives for music, including files obtained illegally, and matches them with the authorised tracks in Apple's iTunes library. It then makes a quality iTunes version of the tracks automatically accessible in the iCloud.

Read full article.

Record industry lobby says it no longer supports 3-strikes copyright termination laws

Following a UN report condemning laws that require ISPs to disconnect households accused of copyright infringement, the Australian record industry lobby has declared that it does not support the practice anymore.

[via boingboing]

Is YouTube Killing Music Piracy?

For years the top record label executives have been claiming that it’s impossible to compete with free, but YouTube is proving them wrong. With billions of views every month the major record labels are making millions by sharing their music for free. For many people YouTube takes away the incentive to ‘pirate,’ but at the same time it may also cannibalise legal music sales.

... People have moved from buying albums to buying singles. But there’s another big change that occurred, one that may have an even bigger impact on the music industry as a whole; YouTube and other ‘free’ music sources.

Read full article in TorrentFreak.

Canadian copyright collective wants a music tax on memory cards

According to Michael Geist, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which collects the private copying revenues, would like to establish a new levy on blank memory cards used in a wide range of devices such as smartphones and digital cameras.

[via boingboing]

Major Record Labels Settle Suit With LimeWire

Ending a five-year court battle over music piracy, the major record companies on Thursday settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with LimeWire, a popular file-sharing network, for $105 million, the RIAA announced announced.

[via Media Decoder Blog]

Albums exclusively released through mobile phones create new trend

In the Philippines, a local phone company launched a phone called Music Album Phone which features an artist’s full-length album which pirates cannot download. Thus, fans can only hear the specific albums on their mobile phone units.

MyPhone’s VP for Marketing and Business Development Richie De Quina told Bulletin Entertainment, “We’re serious in supporting the local music industry and this move is a strong indication of our campaign against piracy. Both artists and fans can enjoy bragging rights to the albums we’re releasing considering we cater to recordings you can only hear through our phone units.”

Read full article.

Lime Wire strikes back in court against RIAA

Free music is here to stay and punishing Lime Wire founder Mark Gorton for that fact is unjust and won't change a thing, Gorton's lawyers said in federal court today, reports News.com.

... The RIAA wants Gorton and Lime Wire to pay the maximum amount under the law: $150,000 for each of the 9,715 albums it seeks damages for, or a total of $1.4 billion.

Burdening Gorton with a judgment that's even close to that figure would be wrong, Joseph Baio, one of Gorton's attorneys, said during his opening statement to the jury.

... Earlier in the hearing, the RIAA suggested that LimeWire was largely to blame for the 52 percent decline in music sales during the past 10 years.

Read full article.

Lime Wire's day of reckoning is here

Mark Gorton and Lime Wire pocketed millions by enabling people to obtain songs online without paying for them. Now, Gorton and his company could end up paying damages of over $1 billion. News.com reports.

In a New York federal court this week, the four largest record companies will try to prove that it was Gorton's own greed that drove him to continue operating Lime Wire, the company behind the highly popular file-sharing service LimeWire, though they warned him years ago to stop and fellow peer-to-peer operators advised him to cut a deal.

Read more.

Pandora Issued a Subpoena for Possibly Violating Internet Privacy Laws

Pandora, the popular streaming music service, has been issued a subpoena by a federal grand jury concerning the sharing of personal data with its smartphone application.

[via TIME's Techland]

Is Rebecca Black suing "Friday" producers?

The continuing behind-the-scenes drama of Rebecca Black's "Friday" continues to be more interesting than the song itself ever was, as NBC New York reports that the teen songbird is suing the music factory her mother paid to make her a star in the first place:

Rebecca Black and her mother are alleging that Ark Music Factory has been exploiting Black's likeness on YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, and their own web site, have created and sold an "unauthorized" 'Friday" ringtone, and have not supplied Black with the master recordings of his song and video.

[via metro]

China's Baidu to Compensate Songwriters for Music Downloads

China's largest search engine Baidu said it will start paying an agency representing songwriters for every music download on the site, after years of being criticized for providing links to pirated music downloads. PC World reports.

On Friday, Baidu announced that it had made an agreement with the Music Copyright Society of China to establish a partnership to protect legal digital music, and will pay copyright holders to use their music. This will encompass any song that is downloaded from Baidu's music search site, said company spokesman Kaiser Kuo.

Read full article.

Music industry will force licenses on Amazon Cloud Player—or else

Amazon's decision to launch its new Cloud Player without securing additional music licenses has been described as a "bold move" by many observers, reports arstechnica.

It takes serious guts for Amazon to simply declare that it doesn't need licenses—especially when even casual observers know the music industry thinks otherwise. Still, this isn't a one-dimensional issue, and the law has yet to deal much with services like Amazon's. Record companies fantasize about huge revenues from streaming services, and they fear digital lockers like the plague.

If the record labels don't come to a licensing agreement with Amazon soon, they will either be forced to take legal action or implicitly allow other music companies to ditch cloud licenses too.

Read full article.

Website selling illegal Beatles tracks ordered to pay $1m

A website that illicitly sold Beatles downloads in 2009 has been ordered to pay almost $1m to rights holders. Bluebeat.com claimed it was circumnavigating copyright law by offering "psycho-acoustic simulations" of music by the Fab Four and other acts including Coldplay and Radiohead.

[via The Guardian]

Eminem Lawsuit May Raise Pay for Older Artists

The most closely watched lawsuit in the music industry asks this question: how much should a song on iTunes or another digital music service be worth to the performer? The New York Times reports.

The artist at the center of the suit is Eminem, but some of the biggest beneficiaries of the case may be thousands of older artists who have not released an album in decades.

Four years ago, the producers who discovered Eminem sued his record label, the Universal Music Group, over the way royalties are computed for digital music, which boils down to whether an individual song sold online should be considered a license or a sale. The difference is far from academic because, as with most artists, Eminem’s contract stipulates that he gets 50 percent of the royalties for a license but only 12 percent for a sale.

Read full article.

Previously: Related articles.

Supreme Court won't get involved in Eminem royalty lawsuit

The Supreme Court won't get involved in a fight between Eminem's former production company and Universal Music Group over downloads of the rapper's songs and ringtones.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Universal Music Group.

[via ABCNews]

Upset YouTube Users Strike Back at Music Biz

Employees of Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal Music aren’t welcome here: That’s the message an increasing number of German bloggers and website owners are conveying online these days through a new project called Bust All Major Labels. GigaOM reports.

The project is a reaction to the fact that rights holders have blocked hundreds of YouTube music videos in Germany, and it uses a kind of eye-for-an-eye approach to get its point across: Website owners add a few lines of JavaScript code to their site to actively block visitors with IP addresses owned by major labels.

Read full article.

Lime Wire, music publishers settle copyright case

The operator of LimeWire, a once-popular file-sharing service shut down last year for copyright infringement, has settled a lawsuit brought by music publishers.

The settlement with Lime Wire covers more than 30 publishers, including units of EMI Group, Sony Corp and Vivendi SA. The terms were not disclosed.

[via The Sydney Morning Herald]

Previously:

-- RIAA asks court to close down LimeWire

-- Internet File-Sharing Service Is Sued by Music Publishers

Free Trove of Music Scores on Web Hits Sensitive Copyright Note

The International Music Score Library Project allows free downloads and is raising copyright concerns among traditional music publishers. The New York Times reports.

It claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month. That is a worrisome pace for traditional music publishers, whose bread and butter comes from renting and selling scores in expensive editions backed by the latest scholarship. More than a business threat, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers.

Read more.

Japan. Ringtone monopoly ruling upheld

According to the Daily Yomiuri Online, the Supreme Court has ruled against Sony Music Entertainment (SME) and two other firms that had sought reversal of a lower court verdict that they violated the Antimonopoly Law regarding online ringtones distribution.

Rejecting the firms' appeal, the second petty bench of the top court agreed with an earlier Tokyo High Court ruling that the trio had prevented competitors from entering the online ringtone distribution business.

Read full article.

Nokia Gets Exemption from Paying Music Royalty Levies

Nokia has been exempted from paying copyright feees to the Hungarian music collections society, Artisjus, but only because a court found that that Artisjus' procedures were unfair and unbalanced.

[via Cellular News]

Stopping illegal file sharing a low priority for DOJ?

An interesting read in News.com on the actual efforts of the DOJ in protecting intellectual property rights.

... Media companies say piracy costs the U.S. economy billions and kills jobs, harming actors and musicians as well as caterers and truck drivers. Entertainment companies spend millions on lobbying efforts and all the government can muster is one "significant' digital-media prosecution.

Is the commercial pirating of films and music online harder to prosecute? Are media companies hurt by this as much as they say? (The credibility of the studies that film and music sectors have cited on the impacts of piracy were called into question by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year.) How much support in Washington do entertainment companies possess?

For all the talk about the political might of big entertainment companies, when it comes to protecting copyright, it appears more and more that they're on their own.

Read full article.

Row Between Cellphone Companies and Music Composers over Revenue Pie

Steady technological advances in India, including increased broadband penetration and rising number of mobile phone subscribers, have been creating newer avenues for non-physical music formats. [Tehelka via Cellular News]

With consumers eager to download the latest numbers like "Sheila ki jawani" on their cellphones, a battle royale appears to be playing out between lyricists and composers and mobile service providers about who gets to retain a larger share of the revenue pie.

... "India has 500 million mobile phone subscribers, as against 16 million Indians who have access to the internet. The music industry is roughly a tenth of the entire movie business. An amazing fact is that the caller tune business has brought in more money than the entire music industry," said Jehil Thakkar, executive director (media and entertainment), KPMG.

Read full article.

Illegal music downloads are 'on the rise'

Around 7.7m people have illegally downloaded music this year, according to research commissioned by the British record industry's trade association.

Its latest report suggests more than 1.2bn tracks were pirated or shared, costing the industry £219m ($342m).

[via the BBC]

Piracy Fight Shuts Down Music Blogs

Dozens of sites shut down and domain names have been seized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accused of copyright infringement and selling counterfeit goods.

The seizure made without warning over Thanksgiving weekend of 82 sites involved a handful of music blog, sites selling knockoff handbags, sunglasses and other goods.

Read full article in The New York Times.

Lady Gaga songs 'stolen' off computer by German Hackers

Two people are being investigated by police in Germany after being accused of stealing songs from artists like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake and Ke$ha. The BBC reports.

Media reports in the country have named the pair as 18 year old student Deniz A, known as DJ Stolen, and Christian M, who is thought to be unemployed.

They are under investigation for using a trojan horse virus to hack into the artists' computers for about 12 months before being discovered according to German prosecutor Rolf Haferkamp.

Read full article.

Jammie Thomas hit with $1.5 million verdict

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who has been fighting the recording industry over 24 songs she illegally downloaded and shared online four years ago, has lost another round in court. Cnet reports.

... The trial is the third for Thomas-Rasset, who was originally accused of sharing 1,700 songs--enough to fill about 150 CDs. After one jury found her liable for copyright infringement in 2007 and ordered her to pay $222,000, the judge in the case later ruled that he erred in instructing the jury and called for a retrial. In the second trial, which took place in 2009, a jury found Thomas-Rasset liable for $1.92 million.

But earlier this year, the judge found that amount to be "monstrous and shocking" and reduced the amount to $54,000. Following that, the RIAA informed Thomas-Rasset that it would accept $25,000--less than half of the court-reduced award--if she agreed to ask the judge to "vacate" his decision, which means removing his decision from the record. Thomas-Rasset rejected that offer almost immediately.

Read full article. Image from Wired

Music Licensing Group, Mobile Carriers Close to Royalty Deal, Lawyers Say

A licensing organization is near a settlement with two of the largest mobile-phone companies on payments for music over wireless devices, lawyers for both sides said in court, reports Bloomberg.

ASCAP, Verizon Communications Inc. and Ericsson Inc. are close to an agreement, their lawyers said today at a hearing in New York. Ascap hasn’t reached agreement with another carrier, AT&T Inc., its lawyer said.

Read full article.

Former music label boss: beat piracy by selling albums for £1

Would musicians make more money selling more copies of albums at a fraction of the current price? Or does dirt-cheap music simply devalue the product art? [via arstechnica]

The former head of Warner Music in the UK, Rob Dickins, threw some gasoline onto this burning question last week at a music conference. Dickins suggested that albums should go for as little as £1, or just a bit more than the current iTunes price for individual tracks.

In his view, the key is to make music purchases a no-brainer—an impulse purchase. The idea is that even those with some casual interest in a band might snap up a new release when priced at a buck or two.

Read full article

French subsidy for music download card gets EU nod

France's strategy to combat illegal music downloads by contributing to the amount young people pay for them won European Union approval and praise for promoting cultural diversity. Reuters reports.

Under the scheme, French residents who purchase a card to download music from subscription-based website platforms, will only pay half the cost of a 50-euro credit included in the card, with the French government paying the rest. The scheme, which will benefit 12-to-25-year-olds, is expected to last two years, with consumers limited to one card a year.

It will cost France 25 million euros ($34.65 million) annually based on its sales estimate of a million cards. The card, "carte musique jeune" should launch between October 25 and 31, according to ZDNet France.

Read more.

Music industry dismayed by failure in Irish filesharing case

The process of pursuing and penalising illegal filesharers in Ireland has been thrown into uncertainty after a failed attempt by four of the world's largest record companies to legally enforce the "three strikes" rule. Read full text of the high court judgment.

Influential music industry bodies say the judgment is "a setback for the Irish music business".

[via The Guardian]

Film Director Comes to the Defense of a Convicted Internet Pirate

James Climent, a French photographer convicted of copyright theft for illegally downloading thousands of songs on the Internet has found an unlikely patron: famous film director Jean-Luc Godard.

Mr. Climent said Mr. Godard this month donated 1,000 euros to his fund, helping him get him more than halfway toward the 5,000 euros he needs for legal fees and other costs of taking his case to the European Court.

[via The New York Times]

Previously: - Jean-Luc Godard: "There is no such as thing as intellectual privacy"

Activists target recording industry websites

Piracy activists have carried out coordinated attacks on websites owned by the music and film industry. The BBC reports.

The assault temporarily knocked the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) offline.

The attacks were declared on notorious message-board 4chan and were reportedly in retaliation for anti-piracy efforts against file-sharing websites.

The group has declared it will continue to target other sites.

Read full article.