JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum copyright makeover?

The Register of Copyrights has proposed that copyright law be reformed to make obtaining right to record and distribute copies of existing songs less complicated:

Copyright Makeover
http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000390047920/

I'm not sure I fully understand, but it looks like she's advocating the creation of Music Rights Organizations (similar to PROs) to manage the statutory licensing stuff.

People who wanted to record covers would go through the MRO instead of the copyright owners to obtain the licenses. In other words, if you wanted to do a cover album of ten different songs, instead of tracking down all the labels and writers and whoever actually owns the copyright to each song, you'd just go the appropriate MRO and they'd handle it.

Thoughts on this?

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Scott Andrew
Lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!
http://www.scottandrew.com/music

Harry Fox already does some of this. When a license is obtained the remittance still has to be paid to the copyright owner who has to distribute to the writers. If the copyright owner can't be found a license can be obtained thru the copyright office of which is already in place. Maybe this post is some type of streamlining.

Right. This proposal would allow PROs like ASCAP to basically do the same job as HFA does.

This also means that a P2P service or internet radio station could (in theory) become "legal" by going to an MRO and pay a yearly blanket license to provide music, instead of tracking down the copyright holder(s) of every song.

Actually, I've been advocating a system like this for years: P2P companies could submit a license fee and a report of average file usage on their networks. The MRO takes the report and divvies up the cash accordingly to the copyright holders.

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Scott Andrew
Lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!
http://www.scottandrew.com/music

After reading the article I can see that anyone actually in the music business would see that the proposals will not work. Licensing still has to be done by the copyright holder for a mechanical license. The copyright holder still has to register the song with the PRO for public preformances. Licenses still have to be issued for any digital downloads. The Record Labels pay mechanical royelities to the copyright holder (most likely) a publisher. The Pros pay royalities directly to songwriter(s) and publishers. Any digital licenses for downloads would have to be paid again to the copyright holder. It is complex.

Ray, this proposal came from Marybeth Peters, the US Register of Copyrights. I think she knows someting about music licensing

In fact, the reason for this proposal is to eliminate much of the complexity you've just described.

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Scott Andrew
Lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!
http://www.scottandrew.com/music