Who Is Your Lawyer? » music

Grooveshark and the Copyright Pirates

Robert Scott Lawrence — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:53:57 +0000

Just before the closing bell on Friday, Universal filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Grooveshark’s parent company, Escape Media Group, in New York district court alleging that the company’s employees had illegally uploaded as many as 100,000 songs to the Grooveshark playlist. Though the complaint is not yet available on the court’s website, the allegations bandied about in the press paint a damning picture of the company’s business practices. These new allegations follow hard on the heels of last month’s comments by an anonymous tipster who claimed to be a current Grooveshark employee. According to the tipster: “We are assigned a predetermined amount of weekly uploads to the system and get a small extra bonus if we manage to go above that (not easy). The assignments are assumed as direct order for the top to the bottom, we don’t just volunteer to “enhance” the Grooveshark database … Are the above legal or ethical? Of course not . . . .”

A number of reports quote the complaint as alleging that Grooveshark’s executive officers not only directed the illegal uploading, but participated in the wrongdoing themselves, going so far as to claim that CEO Samuel Tarantino personally uploaded at least 1,791 copyrighted songs to the Grooveshark system, Senior Vice President Paul Geller uploaded 3,453 copyrighted songs to the system, and Vice President Benjamin Westermann-Clark uploaded more than 4,600 illegal tracks. Although, as a general rule, I tend be skeptical about allegations of pervasive wrongdoing in the upper echelons of a company when they are casually bruited about without any accompanying proof, the allegations – if true – do not bode well for Grooveshark’s future. The company has been plagued by similar litigation in the past, which resulted in settlements and licensing agreements with Capitol and Virgin Records (among others), but in recent days the attacks have come with a relentlessness that bodes ill for Grooveshark. Among other setbacks, earlier in the week the anti-piracy group RettighedsAlliancen (renowned for taking on Pirate Bay) exhorted the Danish courts to have the country’s Internet service providers block Grooveshark in Denmark. While Grooveshark has managed to weather such storms in the past, the efforts now being brought to bear against the company may presage its doom.

Stay tuned for further news and updates.

Update 11/23/2011: Click here for a copy of the just-released Universal v. Grooveshark Complaint. Click here to see the Exhibits to the Universal v. Grooveshark Complaint.

Trademark Your Oink! Oink!

Robert Scott Lawrence — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:44:02 +0000

One of the almost-overlooked categories of trademarks is SOUND. Most people don’t realize that a distinctive sound associated with a brand can be trademarked, but like many things “most people” don’t know much about (like particle physics) there is almost always more there than meets the eye. Or the ear, in this case. To date, only 157 sensory trademarks have been registered with the USPTO, but some of them are quite recognizable (at least with a little prompting). Below are a few of the better known sound marks.

1. The MGM lion’s roar

2. The well-known NBC chimes

3. The Yahoo yodel

4. The perky “Have a good night’s sleep on us, Mattress Discounters!”

5. AOL’s classic “You’ve got mail!”

6. Easytel’s derivative “You’ve got cash!”

7. The slightly robotic “Hello and welcome to Moviephone!”

8. The Pillsbury Doughboy’s giggle

9. The Looney Tunes theme song

10. Homer Simpson’s “D’oh!”

And lastly, an oldie (ancient, in fact) but my personal favorite of the bunch, the extended play version of the theme to The Lone Ranger series, with a “Hi ho Silver, Away!” and bits from the William Tell Overture.

You Can’t Sing That on TV!

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:07:33 +0000

We all unthinkingly listen to music when we turn on the television. Whether we watch MTV, are addicted to American Idol, sit through the opening soundtrack of any hit series, or just channel surf, we are inundated with lyrics and songs — so much so that we take the presence of music on TV for granted. Stepping back a second, we know that MTV music videos are — obviously — produced and shown with the consent of the performing artists. And we should know that any song chosen for the theme of a series also brings the recording artist some benefits, in that the television studio pays to license the song (and it usually takes off as a hit on the radio, with a corresponding surge in CD sales). But what about those songs that appear ephemerally in bar scenes, or at dance clubs, or the song a character belts out in the shower as he gets ready for work in the morning? Are those also paid for by the TV studios, or are snatches of songs sung on shows permissible use (e.g. fair use)?

The answer is simple, if not necessarily obvious. Generally, the artist is supposed to get a performance royalty, even if just a snippet is used — so that 32 seconds of a pop hit sung by the hero of the series on his commute home could land the artist a check for several thousand dollars. But, as Christina Mulligan has written in her excellent blog post about the hit series Glee, the tension between creation and copyright law may not always find a happy ending — among the many complications of a show that involves weekly mash-ups and alternative arrangements of lots of different music, apparently Bryan Adams still won’t let the Glee kids use his songs (though Coldplay finally relented). So if you were looking forward to a big Summer of ’69 episode, remember that patience is a virtue and pray that the aging rocker has a change of heart.

The RIAA Will Sue Your Grandma

Robert Scott Lawrence — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:37:12 +0000

The RIAA has now sued or threatened to sue more than 28,000 people in the United States, in most cases extracting settlements of several thousand dollars from college students, housewives, and families with precocious preteens who downloaded music from Grokster, Kazaa, LimeWire, or BearShare. In many cases the infractions alleged are minimal (e.g., 5 songs) but the damages sought are not. The litigation strategy is intended to create the public perception that even the smallest infraction will be prosecuted and even the most naive teenager will be punished. The lawsuits are clearly not brought to win damages – suing unemployed college students has never been a winner on the Mensa list of ways to make a buck. Obviously, the real intent behind the lawsuits is to strike fear into the hearts of everyone contemplating file-sharing, to instill the thought in the back of your mind that you could be next. What the RIAA wants is for you to pause before downloading, remember the litigation horror stories, and delete LimeWire from your desktop. If you remember that RIAA lawyers are so aggressive they will not hesitate to sue your deceased grandmother, perhaps that will deter you from your illicit quest to download “I Wanna Know What Love Is” for free.

Though the RIAA’s litigation strategy apparently has a certain surface appeal to music industry egos, in real life the RIAA’s rigid litigation model has not yielded meaningful results. Apart from alienating the general public and creating an enormous amount of superfluous litigation for the courts’ already overcrowded dockets, the results have been abysmal. The RIAA has failed to discourage file-sharing, and created an underground file-sharing community that — like Ninja assassins — quietly creep up out of nowhere and download billions of songs on ever-changing platforms. Every time a file-sharing company gets big enough to be noticed and sued by the RIAA, it is replaced by yet another start-up providing exactly the same service at a new location, with better cloaking technology. While the industry can sue LimeWire, Pirate Bay, Napster, and all and sundry for all they’re worth, eventually a compromise is going to have to be made. The “we’ll sue you into the ground” business model is not working, is not good business, and is quite possibly not good law — just yesterday the 16 year old cheerleader who got sued for downloading 37 songs and was ordered to pay $27,750 filed a Petition for Certiorari with the Supreme Court asking the court to overturn the decision against her on the (frankly quite believable) grounds that she didn’t realize that file-sharing was against the law.

Pub Owners Raise A Pint

Robert Scott Lawrence — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:12:59 +0000

Publicans across the British Isles stand to recover as much as £20 million in their ongoing legal battle over the payment of copyright fees for playing music at their pubs. A High Court ruling yesterday found in the favor of pubs, restaurants, and hotels, and dismissed the appeal by Phonographic Performance Ltd, which had introduced new tariffs on the music in 2005, raising fees fourfold. The ruling saves the pubs at least £3 million per annum going forward, and opens the door to refunds of up to £10 million for overcharges going back to 2005.

“Men” Down in Case Down Under

Robert Scott Lawrence — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:21:18 +0000

The 80′s Australian pop-rock band Men at Work, whose vegemite-themed hit “Down Under” vaulted them into superstardom — winning them a Grammy for Best New Artist, and earning them a place in rock history as the only Aussie band to have ever concurrently had a No. 1 album and single in the U.S. – has been found liable for infringing the copyright of the 1935 children’s campfire tune “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.” An Australian court ruled today that the band had copied substantial portions of ‘Kookaburra,’ specifically finding that the flute riff in “Down Under” replicated a material section of the earlier work. The band was ordered to pay some 27 years of royalties earned by their hit song.

Attorneys for the company which owns the rights to ‘Kookaburra’ stated out of court that they may seek up to 60 percent of the royalties earned by “Down Under” since its release. Considering that the song has sold more than 20 million copies since its release, the anticipated damages could force the aging rockers into yet another round of reunion concerts.

Baidu Beats Piracy Charges

Robert Scott Lawrence — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:16:12 +0000

A Chinese court found no wrongdoing by Baidu in a copyright infringement case launched against the largest search engine in China some two years ago by Universal Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment Hong Kong and Warner Music Hong Kong. The Beijing court ruled that the search engine had not broken the law by linking downloads that infringe copyright.

The IFPI expressed disappointment with the ruling, which left them contemplating their next steps in the face of yet another adverse ruling against the music companies by Chinese courts. In the view of IFPI, the verdict did not comport with their belief that Baidu had created its music search businesses “on the basis of facilitating mass copyright infringement, to the detriment of artists, producers and all those involved in China’s legitimate music market.” Given that Baidu now has a music partnership with seven labels (including EMI) that allows it to legally stream music, this may be the end of their legal woes with the recording industry.

Who Is Your Lawyer? » music

Grooveshark and the Copyright Pirates

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Trademark Your Oink! Oink!

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