Month: November 2019

Defiance or Collaboration? The Role of the Presidential Signing Statement in MLC Board Appointments

Even though they have a long history, Presidential Signing Statements are not exactly front and center in every civics class or constitutional public law class in America.  You may be hearing about them for the first time now.  But that doesn’t mean they have not been an important part of Constitutional law-making and jurisprudence.

Presidential Signing Statements were first used by President James Monroe in 1822 in the form of a “special message” to the Senate. Presidents Andrew Jackson, John Tyler and Ulysses Grant also issued signing statements, but they were used infrequently until the 20th Century.  Then their use picked up quite a bit starting with President Theodore Roosevelt and continuing to the present day.  So the use of Signing Statements is quite bipartisan.  While Signing Statements may not themselves have any actionable legal effect, they should not be ignored, either.

The MMA Presidential Signing Statement

Not surprisingly, there is a Presidential Signing Statement accompanying the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) specifically relating to Title I and at that specifically relating to the MLC board appointments.  The relevant language is:

One provision, section 102, authorizes the board of directors of the designated mechanical licensing collective to adopt bylaws for the selection of new directors subsequent to the initial designation of the collective and its directors by the Register of Copyrights and with the approval of the Librarian of Congress (Librarian). Because the directors are inferior officers under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, the Librarian must approve each subsequent selection of a new director. I expect that the Register of Copyrights will work with the collective, once it has been designated, to ensure that the Librarian retains the ultimate authority, as required by the Constitution, to appoint and remove all directors.

Let’s explore why we should care about this guidance.

According to Digital Music News, there have been changes at the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc. (“MLCI”) the private non-profit permitted under Title I of the MMA:

[I]t appears that two separate MLC board members are jumping ship.  The details are just emerging and remain unconfirmed, though it appears that two members — one representing indie songwriters and the other on the publishing side — are out of the organization.

Because the board composition of MLCI is preemptively set by the U.S. Copyright Act along with many other aspects of MLCI’s operating mandate, the question of replacing board members may be arising sooner than anyone expected.  As MLCI is a creature of statute, it should not be controversial that law-makers play an ongoing role in its governance.

The Copyright Office Weighs In

The Copyright Office addressed board appointments for MLCI in its first request for information for the designation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (83 CFR 65747, 65750 (December 21, 2018) available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2018-12-21/pdf/2018-27743.pdf):

The MLC board is authorized to adopt bylaws for the selection of new directors subsequent to the initial designation of the MLC. The Presidential Signing Statement accompanying enactment of the MMA states that directors of the MLC are inferior officers under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, and that the Librarian of Congress must approve each subsequent selection of a new director. It also suggests that the Register work with the MLC, once designated, to address issues related to board succession.

When you consider that MLCI is, for all practical purposes, a kind of hybrid quasi-governmental organization (or what the Brits might call a “quango”), the stated position of the President, the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Office should not be surprising. 

Why the Controversy?

As the Songwriters Guild of America notes in comments to the Copyright Office in part relating to the Presidential Signing Statement (my emphasis):

Further, it seems of particular importance that the Executive Branch also regards the careful, post-designation oversight of the Mechanical Collective board and committee members by the Librarian of Congress and the Register as a crucial prerequisite to ensuring that conflicts of interest and bias among such members not poison the ability of the Collective to fulfill its statutory obligations for fairness, transparency and accountability. 

The Presidential Signing Statement, in fact, asserts unequivocally that “I expect that the Register of Copyrights will work with the collective, once it has been designated, to ensure that the Librarian retains the ultimate authority, as required by the Constitution, to appoint and remove all directors.”

SGA regards it as a significant red flag that the NMPA-MLC submission to the Copyright Office devotes the equivalent of ten full pages of text principally in attempting to refute this governmental oversight authority, and regards the expression of such a position by NMPA/MLC as arguably indicative of an organization more inclined towards opaque, insider management control than one devoted to fairness, transparency and accountability.

So the Presidential Signing Statement to the MMA is obviously of great import given the amount of ink that has been spilled on the subject.  Let’s spill some more.

How might this oversight be given effect and will it be in the public record or an informal process behind closed doors?  Presumably it should be done in the normal course by a cooperative and voluntary collaboration between the MLC and ultimately the Librarian.  Minutes of such collaboration could easily be placed in the Federal Register or some other public record on the Copyright Office website.  Failing that collaboration, it could be done by either the Department of Justice (unlikely) or by individuals (more likely) asking an Article III court to rule on the issue.  

Of course, the issue should not delay the Copyright Royalty Judges from proceeding with their assessment determination to fund the MLC pursuant to the controversial voluntary settlement or otherwise.  One could imagine an oversight role for the CRJs given that Congress charged them with watching the purse strings and the quantitative implies the qualitative.  The CRJs have until until July 2020 to rule on the initial administrative assessment and appeal seems less likely today given the voluntary settlement and the elimination of any potential objectors. 

Since the Title I proponents drafted the bill to require a certain number of board seats to be filled by certain categories of persons approved by Congress in a Madisonian balance of power, the Presidential Signing Statement seems well grounded and furthers the Congressional mandate.

Yet there is this conflict over the Presidential Signing Statement.  What are the implications?

A Page of History is Worth A Volume of Logic

The President’s relationship to legislation is binary—sign it or veto it.  Presidential Signing Statements are historically used as an alternative to the exercise of the President’s veto power and there’s the rub. 

Signing Statements effectively give the President the last word on legislation as the President signs a bill into law.   Two competing policies are at work in Presidential Signing Statements—the veto power (set forth in the presentment clause, Article I, Sec. 7, clause 2), and the separation of powers. 

Unlike some governors, the President does not enjoy the “line item veto” which permits an executive to blue pencil the bits she doesn’t like in legislation presented for signature.  (But they tried–Line Item Veto Act ruled unconstitutional violation of presentment clause in Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417 (1998).) The President can’t rewrite the laws passed by Congress, but must veto the bill altogether.  Attempting to both reject a provision of a new law as unconstitutional, announce the President’s intention not to enforce that provision AND sign the bill without vetoing it is where presidents typically run into trouble.

Broadly speaking, Presidential Signing Statements can either be a President’s controversial objection to a bill or prospective interpretive guidance.  Signing Statements that create controversy are usually a refusal by the President to enforce the law the President just signed because the President doesn’t like it but doesn’t want to veto it.  Or to declare that the President thinks the law is unconstitutional and will not enforce it for that reason—but signed it anyway.  

The President can also use the Signing Statement to define or interpret a key term in legislation in a particular way that benefits the President’s policy goals or political allies.  President Truman, for example, interpreted a statutory definition in a way that benefited organized labor which was later enforced by courts in line with the Signing Statement.  President Carter used funds for the benefit of Vietnam resisters in defiance of Congress, but courts later upheld the practice—in cases defended by the Carter Justice Department.  The practice of using Presidential Signing Statements is now routine and has been criticized to no avail for every administration in the 21st Century including Bush II, Obama and now Trump. 

Since the 1980s, it has become common for Presidents to issue dozens if not hundreds of Presidential Signing Statements during their Administration.  So it should come as no surprise if the Department of Justice drafted up the statement for the MMA prior to it being presented to the President to be signed into law.  (See the American Presidency Project archives https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/presidential-documents-archive-guidebook/presidential-signing-statements-hoover-1929-obama)

Defiance or Collaboration?

What does this mean for the MMA?  The President certainly did not call out the statutorily required board membership of the MLC as an unconstitutional overreach that he would not enforce.  To the contrary, the MMA Signing Statement expresses the President’s desire that the legislation comply with the requirements of the Constitution.  

Moreover,  the MMA Presidential Signing Statement is not a declaration about what the President will or won’t enforce but rather interprets a particular section of a long and winding piece of legislation.  (Title I principally amended Section 115 of the Copyright Act—now longer than the entire 1909 Copyright Act.)  This kind of interpretation seems to be consistent with the practices of prior Presidents of both parties, not an end-run around either the veto power or separation of powers.

Failing to acknowledge the admonition of the signing statement would seem an unnecessary collision both with long-standing jurisprudence and with a sensible recommendation from the President of how the Librarian, the Copyright Office and the Justice Department expect to approach the issue in collaboration with the MLCI.  That’s possibly why the Copyright Office restated the Signing Statement in the RFP.

Title I of the MMA is a highly technical amendment to a highly technical statute.  A little interpretive guidance is probably a good thing.  Collaboration certainly makes more sense than defiance.

What’s Going on with @taylorswift13 and Big Machine–with Update

You’ve probably seen reports of Taylor Swift’s allegation that Big Machine or its assignees are blocking her from performing what appears to be a medley of her old hits (from the Big Machine catalog famously sold to an entity associated with manager Scooter Braun).

According to Rolling Stone:

The spat between Taylor Swift, her former label boss Scott Borchetta, and music mogul Scooter Braun has devolved into a sturm-und-drang public saga. Months after Swift panned Braun’s $300-million takeover of Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group, the singer is saying that the two executives are preventing her from performing her older hits at the American Music Awards — but the validity of both the claim and the alleged action are murky.

Actually maybe not that murky.

Here’s a pretty good artist friendly rerecording restriction:

After the Term, Artist shall not, prior to the later of the following dates, perform for any person, firm, or corporation other than us, for the purpose of making Phonograph Records or Master Recordings, any Selection which was recorded hereunder or under any other agreement between you or your affiliates and us or our affiliates for which we or our affiliates paid an advance against royalties hereunder or under such other agreement (whether or not in respect to Recording Costs) or which is released by us for commercial sale to the general public in the United States, Canada or the United Kingdom no later than six (6) months after the expiration of the Term; provided that if any such Selection was recorded in a Master hereunder and we are otherwise entitled to release such Master in Phonograph Record form, prior to performing such Selection for any third party for the purpose of making Phonograph Records, you shall notify us of our failure to have so released such Master and we shall have six (6) months after the date of such notice to so release such Master, upon which release the Selection embodied in that Master shall be subject to the provisions of this subparagraph and; further provided that if we fail to so release such Master within that six (6) month period, you shall have the right to perform that Selection for any such third party irrespective of the provisions of this subparagraph:  (i) the date five (5) years subsequent to the last date on which a Master Recording embodying that Selection was delivered to us hereunder (but a Master or arrangement thereof included on a “Greatest Hits” or “Best of” LP shall be deemed to have been last recorded when such Master was originally recorded hereunder or under any Prior Agreement; or (ii) the date two (2) years subsequent to the date on which the Term hereof ended.

But here’s another clause relating to TV performances that needs to be carved out from the general rerecording restriction:

If Artist intends to render musical performances on network, cable or other form of television, then Artist shall notify us of Artist’s desire and intention to commence negotiations with respect to any such performance and Label or Label’s affiliate shall have the right, at Label’s election, at any time within five (5) business days after Label’s receipt of that notice from you, to cause Artist (or any entity furnishing Artist services) immediately to enter into good faith negotiations with Label, or our affiliate, concerning the terms and conditions of those performances.  If for any reason Label or Label’s affiliate and Artist (or that entity furnishing Artist services) are unable to agree on the terms and conditions pursuant to which Artist shall render those performances within a twenty (20) day period, then Artist (or that entity furnishing Artist services) shall have the right to enter into negotiations for those performances with any third party.  The foregoing provisions of this subparagraph shall apply to programs primarily or substantially featuring Artist as opposed to programs wherein Artist merely renders a so‑called “guest” performance. Nothing set forth in this Contract shall entitle any third party to exploit Audio-Visual Records embodying the musical performances of Artist.

That TV restriction probably covers Taylor Swift’s AMA performance if it applies after the term expires like a re-recording restriction.  Even if it doesn’t, there’s that last sentence.  “Audio Visual Records” are usually defined to include the kinds of activities that television shows typically want to engage in to exploit and promote their shows, even if there is no permanent download or stored copy sold for streaming.

So if the AMAs are asking for those broad video rights (for example Facebook live streaming, cached streaming, YouTube, etc.), it’s entirely possible that Big Machine has an absolute blocking right on those exploitation channels which would have nothing to do with the re-recording restriction specifically (although the re-record prohibition term might also be implicated).

Something says to me that Taylor Swift is building an evidentiary record for one of the great artist rights lawsuits of all time in the future, but maybe not.

UPDATE:  The Hollywood Reporter has a press release from Taylor Swift’s label that pretty much confirms the interpretation of her re-record restriction that I suspected in this post:

After Taylor Swift claimed last week that Big Machine founder Scott Borchetta and Scooter Braun were preventing her from performing her past hits during the 2019 American Music Awards, Swift’s former record label released a statement Monday that said it had “agreed to grant all licenses of their artists’ performances” on various platforms.

“The Big Machine Label Group informed Dick Clark Productions today that they have agreed to grant all licenses of their artists’ performances to stream post show and for re-broadcast on mutually approved platforms,” the statement reads. “It should be noted that recording artists do not need label approval for live performances on television of any other live media. Record label approval is only needed for contracted artists’ audio and visual recordings and in determining how those works are distributed.”

So a drafting tip–this restriction on televised performances should, at best, only apply during the term of the artist’s exclusive recording agreement.  Those three little words will save a bunch of agita after the term.  If you can’t get that, then another way to get at it is to say the restriction only applies if the artist is recording more than a fixed number of songs that were recorded during the term say three or four.  This is the kind of thing you can get when you are negotiating the artist’s deal going in and that you’ll never get going out.

Should the Copyright Office’s Best Practices Shine Sunlight on the Unmatched?

[This post first appeared in the MusicTechPolicy Monthly newsletter.  Become an email follower of this blog to get your copy.]

We’ve all heard that the digital music services are sitting on a pile of cash in unmatched statutory mechanical royalties also known as the “black box”.  No one knows how much because Title I of the Music Modernization Act does not require them to disclose the unmatched sums being held as of the enactment date (October 11, 2018–a year ago), much less a bring down of the current amount.  And unsurprisingly, no service has voluntarily disclosed how much they are holding.

One may ask, why can’t you just look up on the financial statements of at least the public companies how much they are accruing for their share of the black box?  Good luck with that.

The monies owed to the unmatched “known unknowns” is probably the number one question the services don’t ask their third party reporting agents.  And because of the well known agency principle that “notice of a fact that an agent knows or has reason to know is imputed to the principal if knowledge of the fact is material to the agent’s duties to the principal,” these services likely know as a matter of law how much is in their principals’ respective black boxes or at least what they couldn’t match.  (Restatement (Third) of Agency Sec. 5.03.)

Fortunately, the Copyright Office is tasked with establishing best practices for distributing these unmatched black box monies through regulations to implement these and other provisions of the Music Modernization Act, such as the late fee for non-compliant services.

The Copyright Office has also announced the “kick off” of its study of unclaimed royalties study to be held in Washington, DC on December 6.  This will be great for Washington area songwriters, as well as convenient for the lobbyists and lawyers, but everyone else will have to wait for the transcript and video which unfortunately (and perhaps incredibly) will not be live streamed.  Even so, these pending regulations and the upcoming mandated study on matching are the best chance songwriters have had for a generation to get a straight count on unmatched mechanicals.

There are two currently existing standards that the Copyright Office can reference for examples of industry best practices-the SoundExchange unclaimed royalty search for new members and the Lowery-Ferrick Spotify class action Songclaims portal powered by Crunch Digital.  It seems inescapable that these claiming standards should be guideposts for both the Copyright Office and the Copyright Royalty Judges.

Having such clear cut standards–already operational so not theoretical–is fortunate because it seems obvious that the Congress is both concerned with the black box distributions not being gamed and also intends to exercise its statutory authority to retain oversight over the Mechanical Licensing Collective’s operations.  In fact, Senator Grassley specifically stated in his questions for the record following the Copyright Office oversight hearing that:

The success of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) will depend, to a large extent, on the effective and efficient operation of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). The MMA included provisions to ensure that there was robust ongoing oversight of the MLC by both the Copyright Office and Congress, and that the new MLC would be accountable to the stakeholders.”

This is in addition to the oversight role of the Copyright Royalty Judges with respect to the Administrative Assessment and at least budgetary aspects of the MLC’s operations that inevitably will turn the quantitative into the qualitative.

During her July 30 testimony at the Copyright Office oversight hearing of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple was peppered with questions about the black box from Members of the Committee, including Representatives Ted Deutch, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Chairman Jerry Nadler.

These months after the hearing, the gravamen of the Committee’s questions were crystalized in yet another copyright infringement suit brought against Spotify, this time by Eminem’s publishers.  The key theory of the suit is that Spotify is out of compliance with the conditions for the new safe harbor for copyright infringers that is one of the central themes of the MMA.  The Copyright Office can use the complaint as another guidepost for best practices to be compassed by their new regulations.

As drafted, Title I is an invitation for litigation, so it should be no surprise that the independent publishing community stepped forward to sue as that was the only way to find out what was going on behind the curtain.  However, as Senator Grassley emphasized, Congress charged the Copyright Office to establish regulations to implement Title I and gave the Copyright Royalty Judges a defacto oversight role through their approval of the MLC’s budget.

  1. Copyright Office Regulations

The Copyright Office is in the process of drafting regulations for a number of areas in Title I.  The Copyright Office therefore is in a unique position to avoid a maelstrom of litigation by adopting regulations that shine light on the unmatched, recognize industry practices by SoundExchange and Crunch Digital, and accomplish simple goals.  This is not hard.

Regulations should require iterative public disclosure to accompany the iterative matching  required by Title I.  Remember-many of these services are the biggest, smartest and richest companies in the history of commerce.  They know something about these systems as they all have to one degree or another developed significant in-house expertise.

However, it is crucial to have the unmatched actually administered by an unrelated and trusted infomediary.  This could be done by repurposing existing searchable databases for unclaimed funds while simultaneously disclosing to the public the amounts owed for each song.

Balance the Checkbook:  Immediate Public Release of Trial Balance and Monthly Updates of Unmatched

Each service currently participating in the Initial Administrative Assessment proceeding before the Copyright Royalty Judges should disclose an aggregate trial balance of the total sums they are holding in their respective unmatched accounts.  This total number should be made public as well as the methodology used to calculate it.  Nothing should or needs to be redacted.

The services should update that initial disclosure on a monthly basis.  The monthly calculation should show the month’s starting balance of unmatched royalties, how much was paid out during the month, how much was added during the month, and the remaining balance at the end of the month.  This simple calculation would allow songwriters to know what monies were being held with no intermediaries.  It’s as simple as balancing a checkbook.

Unmatched Lookup

If the services know the total sums, they should also be able to disclose the sound recording titles at least, if not the artist names, ISRCs, other metadata for the recordings of the songs that comprise the totals.  These services should be able to provide a simple web-based look-up so that songwriters could know if their songs are included in a service’s unmatched accrual.

Cost Reimbursement

It is becoming increasingly obvious to independent publishers that there will be significant resources and costs required to deliver their data to the MLC and claim their unmatched.   Those transaction costs of delivering data to the MLC-without which the imagined global rights database would not be functional enough to distribute the black box effectively-are incremental to publishers who have been doing business prior to the MMA and the MLC.

These incremental costs are easily identifiable and should be invoiced to the MLC by rights owners to be included in the next administrative assessment and reimbursed by the services.

Future Licensees

Any future licensee (blanket or nonblanket) should also be required to comply with these obligations and disclosures.

2.  Role of the Copyright Royalty Judges

The Copyright Royalty Judges are currently conducting a proceeding to establish the initial “administrative assessment” for the MLC.  The rules of the proceeding require the MLC and the Digital Licensee Coordinator to attempt to reach a voluntary agreement on the amount of the assessment.  If they fail, the CRJs will determine it for them.  The voluntary negotiation is divided into two periods: July 8 to September 6, and then September 7 to January 28.

The parties have failed to reach an agreement in the first period already, so a very basic assessment of probabilities means there’s less than a 50% chance they will agree during the second period.  If they fail to reach an agreement by February 17th, the CRJs will commence a hearing to reach the decision for them.  (One could argue that the likelihood of a voluntary agreement increases with the passing of time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at this point-it seems to be going the opposite direction.)

Remember-the MLC is supposed to have their imagined global rights database up and running and be fully operational and able to render statements shortly after January 1, 2021, or a little over 14 months from now.  At this point, it seems that there is a greater than 50% probability that Congress will have to amend the MMA to extend the deadline.  Presumably something has happened in the last year to advance the ball.

Crucially, there is an inextricable link between the amount of the administrative assessment and what the MLC intends to do with the money.  Two of those functions will be (1) the MLC’s own efforts at matching whatever is unmatched when the Digital Licensee Coordinator delivers the unmatched accounts (and presumably transaction logs) from the services to the MLC after January 1, 2021, and (2) ingesting data for the imagined global rights database.

Unmatched Best Practices and Disclosures

The CRJs should take a very close look at both the startup and the operating budget for the MLC as well as the underlying assumptions, processes and vendors for those functions to take on the U.S. accounting burden for the entire world.  It should be obvious that the services have a great deal of experience in licensing copyrights and operating royalty systems.

The CRJs should also consider whether they have the authority to address the nexus between the best practices to be adopted by those seeking to rely on the retroactive safe harbor, payments of the newly matched prior to 1/1/21 and public reporting of both accrued unmatched royalties and claiming before and after 1/1/21.  I think they do and they probably have an obligation to do so that is at least as great as the obligation on the Copyright Office.<

Sufficiency of Funding and Sufficiency of Allocation

As Senator Grassley has asked, the CRJs need to address what happens if the process fails to hit the deadlines as part of their determination of the administrative assessment.  Each passing day makes it more likely that the entire procedure will grind to a halt before statements can be rendered.

This concerns both the DLC funding the MLC sufficiently, but it also depends on the MLC allocating those sums appropriately across its operations–and the quantitative implies the qualitative.  Moreover, the CRJs need to fashion a procedure for relief that can be taken up inexpensively by any copyright owner that has a good faith belief they have simply not been accounted to. An example would be someone who was being paid under a statutory license (NOI or modified compulsory) prior to January 1, 2021 whose statements then drop to zero thereafter or who simply receive no statements at all.

While the Register said in response to Rep. Deutch during the Copyright Office oversight hearing that both MLC and AMLC had agreed with the Copyright Office interpretation that unclaimed funds are not to be distributed before 2023, the MLC’s actual statement on the issue is more nuanced.  The judges need to take this into account and leave nothing to the imagination in their determination.

3.  Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant

As Mr. Justice Brandeis taught us in Other People’s Money-And How Bankers Use It,“sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”

Songwriters are in need of both.

@tvanveen: Why CDs and Vinyl Are Important

Tony Van Veen is the CEO of Disc Makers and has some important thought about why physical media like CDs and vinyl are still important in a streaming world, especially for artists who sell records at shows.  I agree with this 100%:

I occasionally hear from an artist who tells me “I’m not making CDs anymore because my fans tell me they have no way to play them.” It saddens me when I hear this because those artists are missing out on a huge opportunity.

It is true that not every fan in 2019 has a CD player, just like they may not have a cassette deck or a vinyl turntable. But there are still plenty of fans who do, and who would like to support their favorite artist. I go beyond the income generating ability of physical media and explore how and why CDs, vinyl, and merch can help you connect with fans in a way no stream ever can.