Tag: ASCAP BMI Consent Decrees

@edchristman: House Judiciary Hearing on Copyright Office Reviews Music Modernization Act, Black Box Royalty Concerns

Editor Charlie sez: You have to love this:

In other news, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, [D-Google]., wants the Copyright Office to study if the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees should be modernized. Lofgren noted that the Department of Justice had reviewed the decrees just a couple of years ago and wondered, “What has changed since the last time?”

Aside from the DOJ dreaming up the insanity of 100% licensing and ignoring all other recommendations from songwriters as they did in the last review under a former Google lawyer working for the Antitrust Division, you mean?

And aside from the fact that the DOJ is reviewing 1,200 legacy consent decrees but only the songwriters get attention from Congress?

Read the post on Billboard

Funny How that Works: @edchristman reports: Irving Azoff, Top Radio Groups Reach Temporary Licensing Agreement — MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY

When two rational actors are economically interdependent on one another, disputes tend to get solved at a market clearing price. So it is with Global Music Rights and the goliath Radio Music License Committee that itself is a member of the even bigger goliath MIC Coalition. (My bet is that the Google-backed MIC Coalition is behind […]

via Funny How that Works: @edchristman reports: Irving Azoff, Top Radio Groups Reach Temporary Licensing Agreement — MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY

Department of Justice Appeals 100% Licensing Ruling

Editor Charlie sez: Remember that the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division came up with a very Googley fairy tale about 100% licensing?  Remember how the DOJ lost that case in the BMI Rate Court?  

Now the U.S. government is appealing the case from the BMI Rate Court to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to try to stick it to songwriters even harder.

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T Bone Burnett on Google’s Nashville Charm Offensive Coming Soon to a City Near You

Google seems to know it has a problem here in Tennessee. That’s why it’s out in the community sponsoring musicians’ workshops, funding “digital inclusion fellowships,” and making big promises about wiring the city with low cost internet – even as local pastors question whether all of our citizens including those in minority communities will get access.  And unions question the company’s push for shortcuts and special rules for its projects that will cost us local jobs.

But for music creators, this is all a sideshow, a corporate feel good effort designed to yank our gaze away from the basic facts – Google is putting all its power and might into killing legal reforms artists and songwriters need to survive.

But we still have a voice.

We must continue to urge Congress to reform the DMCA so the next generation of songwriters, artists, and performers can thrive. We must continue to look skeptically at Google’s effort to paper over issues and distract our institutions and communities from its unfair exploitation of our work.

And we must pursue all avenues and remedies in Congress and the courts – like the landmark win on songwriter royalties that rejected the Google-friendly DOJ’s bogus ruling on “fractional” licensing of our work.

Read the post in The Tennesseean

Google Shills and Pandora’s MIC Coalition Want DOJ to Appeal BMI Ruling–Soviet Style — MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY

 

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Right on cue, one Google Shill after another is floating the idea that the U.S. Department of Justice should appeal their latest oopsie to the Second Circuit.

Talk about ungrateful–Judge Stanton, the BMI Rate Court judge was also the judge in Viacom v. YouTube and the accompanying artist-oriented class action against Google.  In the YouTube case, Judge Stanton ruled for YouTube.

Back then he was hailed by Google Shills everywhere as a great jurist, the peoples’ judge and hero of the disruptive class, because he poked a finger in the eye of bourgeois artists.

Talk about your sore losers–Judge Stanton went from #hero to #goat in record time as CCIA’s Matt Schruers told Bloomberg…

via Google Shills and Pandora’s MIC Coalition Want DOJ to Appeal BMI Ruling–Soviet Style — MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY