Apple Copyright Royalty over old music Ping!
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Posted on 01/24/2015 2:58:31 AM PST by Swordmaker
Following a lengthy lawsuit that pitted Sirius XM Radio against members of classic rock band The Turtles in a fight over royalties for music recordings made before 1972, new class action lawsuits have been filed against Apple, Sony, Google, and Rdio over their streaming music services (via The Recorder). As noted by Law360, Beats Music has also been hit with a suit.
According to the suits, filed yesterday by Zenbu Magazines Inc., streaming services like iTunes Radio, Beats, and Google Play Music have been making money off of pre-1972 music recordings without paying any royalties to the owners of the original recordings.
itunes_radio_hero2 Zenbu owns the copyrights to many songs in question and is represented by The Law Office of Jack Fitzgerald in San Diego. The lawsuit seeks to create a certified "class of all owners of recordings made before February 15, 1972, whose recordings appear on streaming services." While musical compositions have been protected under U.S. copyright law since 1831, sound recordings were only added to the federal copyright act in 1972. That's meant that the holders of copyrights to pre-1972 compositions—largely music publishers—have been paid royalties for public performances while those holding the copyrights to recordings—largely record labels—have not. As noted by The Recorder, last year a judge in Los Angeles decided to extend ownership rights for pre-1972 recordings to include public performances. Similarly, in that case of Sirius XM versus owners of the sound recordings made by The Turtles in the 1960s, U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez ruled against Sirius.
The lawsuits come at a time when Apple is working behind the scenes for an upcoming relaunch of the Beats Music streaming service, rumored to include integration into iTunes and iOS in general. "The streaming services don't have a good idea of what their total liability is going to be," noted Santa Clara law professor Tyler Ochoa, with the lawsuits against the numerous streaming music services "inevitable", following the Sirius XM case.
Due to the growing popularity of streaming services worldwide, Ochoa sees some of the companies perhaps pulling those pre-1972 songs to avoid further liability, with record labels falling in line with their own lawsuits against the services for better royalty deals.
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So Happy Together
I have thousands of old songs on my iPod etc. Hope I don’t have to erase em
Lawyers and has-beens, so happy together.
Has beens. ??
Compared to the crap they call music today much of the music from that era is national treasures.
Why even brother with Congress? We can just have direct rule by judges, the president and various bureaucrats.
Don’t worry, Apple will erase them for you...
I have a bunch on other drives too as regular MP3s. Or soon wil.
You wont.
They'll reach out and do it for you.
Royalties are rolled into the price of anything you buy from iTunes, so your songs are safe for your personal use.
This is all about streaming services, essentially Internet radio.
I am a former Sirius XM subscriber, and they have always had a royalty surcharge (which is never included in their advertised monthly rates). I found that objectionable since it isn’t based on what I specifically listened to (much of which was public domain, or not music at all).
The Sirius XM decision, and any follow-on decisions will merely raise the cost of such services.
I bought 2 new vehicles in the past 2 or so years. Each came with 6 months free Sirius packages with the radio. I’ve listened for a total of perhaps 20 minutes. Not interested I’ll put on Rush some afternoons but after that I keep a 600 or so, song flash drive plugged in and plan on downloading another few thousand songs to flash drives. I have a loaded IPod and IPhone so I can plug in my tunes anywhere
That’s really the way to go.
Sirius XM, in particular, has rather poor sound quality and as with every “oldies” format, in my experience, for every song you like there will be several that you don’t care to hear.
And please don’t take my “has-beens” comment seriously, it was meant as a joke. I own just about every record the Turtles ever made, and thousands of others.
Flo and Eddie. In the 80s they were disc jockeys at a local Station here in NY, they were pretty cool DJs very funny. And their pre album rock top 40 songs from the 60s were a change of pace from the British invasion.
I vaguely remember when talk radio was forced off the internet for a time back in the late 90’s. Rather unpleasant for those with limited local choices.
You won't. This is about streaming recordings of live performances from before February 15, 1972 from a central source, not about songs you already own. The strange thing is the courts have already ruled that performers of live performances are not entitled to royalties for that performance. . . but the authors of the work are. So this is a bit bogus. . . It does not apply to records, tapes, etc., only to concert recordings. What will most likely happen is that Beats, iTunes Radio, Rhapsody, and other streaming music service will just stop playing recordings of older live concerts out of fear that a musician or singer who played in a set in that concert will file suit they'll have to defend. Even some guy who played a kazoo could bring a suit claiming he's owed royalties for his "performance".
Why post something that is untrue? That is something that has never happened. . . no one has ever lost music the legally owned that was on an Apple device legally. The only time people thought they "lost" music on an Apple device was because RealNetworks had hacked iPods to be able to load their DRMed music on to the iPod illegally. When Apple upgraded the iPod's system software, the hack was overwritten by the new software. . . and the music would no longer play or be allowed to sync to the iPod. They lost no music. Their Realnetwork's DRM protection was doing what the LAW required it to do. . . prevent it from loading or playing on NON-Realnetwork players. The courts have just ruled on this case that NO MUSIC WAS REMOVED BY APPLE. The owners still had all of their music on their computers. The miscreant here was RealNetworks. . . committing a Federal crime by hacking. RealNetworks could have solved the problem by providing the same solution Apple provided . . . a means of removing the DRM from the music. They chose NOT to do that.
They also toured with Zappa for a bit.
Why spread such an untruth? First of all, that is not even possible. Secondly, it has never happened. The courts have ruled that Apple was not responsible for the claims in the ten year long class action iPod suit. . . and won. . . because their literally was no evidence. . . or legitimate plaintiffs. They could not find ANY plaintiff's who had ever had any music deleted by Apple.
The Attorney Plaintiffs after losing their last plaintiff, had the JUDGE in the case, go plaintiff shopping. . . and she came up with a woman from Boston, a 65 year old ice dancer, whose complaint was that she could not find her favorite music, Hungarian Tangos, on the iTunes store, and she actually had to buy CDs and rip them to get them onto her iPod. . . oh, the humanity and pain of it all. . . and they did not put her on the stand.
The claims in the lawsuit were made up completely by the attorneys in the case!
Quit spreading untruths and FUD.
Yup. they were in Zappa’s ‘200 motels’ movie . Saw it when it came out
They erased my ring tones with IOS 8. You are wrong buddy!!!
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