Tag: Music Modernization Act

Chronology: The Week in Review: Can an independent auditor look for overpayments?; @Helienne Explains the EU’s Cultural Protections Against Streaming Monopolists; @MikeHuppe Comment on AI Justice

The MLC announced it was auditing 49 users of the blanket mechanical license, a massive undertaking. This announcement sent me back to the audit provisions of Title I of the Music Modernization Act to review what the role of the auditor actually is for audits of music users by the MLC as opposed to audits of the MLC by copyright owners. As often happens when reviewing little-used code sections that abruptly become important, I was reminded of a couple nuances that were obviously flawed when drafted. The key nuance is how can a royalty examiner be looking for overpayments against the interest of the party that hired her but still be independent? 

How qualified is qualified?

The first issue is with the definition of a “qualified auditor”, a glitch that I’ve harped on a few times. The term “qualified auditor” comes up in two different contexts in the MMA–first, a qualified auditor who prepares the MLC’s audited financial statements. The definition of qualified auditor is in 17 USC § 115(e)(25) as “an independent, certified public accountant with experience performing music royalty audits.” The reason why this term is a drafting error is two fold–first, you don’t need a CPA to conduct music royalty audits and there is nothing on the CPA licensure exams that requires any knowledge of “music royalty audits.” Second, you do need a CPA to prepare audited financial statements if the books are maintained according to generally accepted accounting principles particularly if a financial audit requires an opinion as an attest service, but that role does not require knowledge of royalty audits. So the defined term has an internal contradiction. 

The Gaap, ruler of 25 legions of spirits from the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic grimoire

Not only is the definition hinky but it’s common knowledge (outside of the Imperial City, I guess) that many if not most royalty auditors are not CPAs. (There’s also a long-standing assumption among artist lawyers when this concept comes up in record or publishing deals that a CPA requirement for audits is intentionally punitive. The assumption is that CPAs charge more making the cost of auditing more burdensome (therefore less likely to happen), which remains to be proven but is pretty widely accepted.) So the definition should be limited to requiring a CPA for the MLC’s audited financial statements and the common alternate definition of “experienced royalty auditor” for the audit clauses. But let’s put that to one side. 

Overpayments and Independence

The MMA rule for auditing digital music providers states:

The qualified auditor shall determine the accuracy of royalty payments, including whether an underpayment or overpayment of royalties was made by the digital music provider to the mechanical licensing collective, except that, before providing a final audit report to the mechanical licensing collective, the qualified auditor shall provide a tentative draft of the report to the digital music provider and allow the digital music provider a reasonable opportunity to respond to the findings, including by clarifying issues and correcting factual errors.

Realize that the MLC and the services monitor payments and make frequent adjustments to royalties (which may be reflected on your royalty statement if you can find them). That’s different than an auditor who works for a client going and seeking out an overpayment as part of their audit report. Relieving the auditor of this conflict does not preclude the service from claiming an overpayment which is an ongoing part of invoicing (see, e.g., 37 CFR §210.27(d)(2)(ii)). You would not be creating a windfall for the party receiving the overpayment.

I would interpret the statute as not requiring the auditor to seek an additional overpayment not previously invoiced, but rather confirming the accuracy of any adjustments made for overpayments or underpayments already reflected on the statements that are the subject of the audit. That’s quite a different thing.

What makes an auditor independent is that they do not have a conflict of interest as to their client, in this case the MLC. The royalty auditor is intended to be an advocate for their client (who pays them) and they are hired to look for ways that the other side has failed to account to their client properly to their client’s disadvantage. Improper payments are most commonly underpayments, i.e., the music user has failed to pay all that the client is entitled to receive. Royalty statements are regularly recalculated for a host of reasons in the normal course of business without regard to the presence or absence of any audit. This is not to say that somehow the MLC (and eventually the copyright owners) get some kind of windfall because the services missed something if any auditor is not seeking out an overpayment. That’s particularly true since there will likely be multiple sets of eyes on the field work and draft audit report. And trust me, they will all be trying to find somebody else’s mistake.

Or said another way, copyright owners don’t receive a windfall that was somehow missed by the largest corporations in commercial history who can determine what floor of which building you are on at what time of day at what address, e.g., sporting goods or children’s toys, so they can serve ads to your phone. Are we really worried about these little lambs getting lost in the woods?

@Helienne Explains the EU’s Cultural Protections Against Streaming Monopolists

We were lucky to get an interview with ESCA President Helienne Lindvall about the European Parliament’s report on cultural protections against streaming monopolies. This is a very important development and something we could use in the United States where this focus is sadly lacking.

@MikeHuppe Made an Important Comment on AI Justice for Creators

SoundExchange CEO Mike Huppe’s comment on AI justice is welcome from a rights platform.

Guest Post: The Music Modernization Act is Stifling Innovation in the Music Industry

[The chickens are coming home to roost.  As I warned before the Music Modernization Act was passed, Title I has big problems.  Remember that Title I established the Mechanical Licensing Collective (publishers and songwriters) and the Digital Licensee Coordinator (digital music platforms). It was sold to songwriters on the basis that “the services pay for everything”.  We will see how true that ends up being (as the copyright owners have to pay their costs to populate or correct the HFA database which is a massive undertaking).  Nobody talked to any DMP startups when the legislation was drafted or when the “administrative assessment” was litigated before the Copyright Royalty Judges.  But now startups are getting the bill and they’re not too happy, particularly 115 services that never had to pay for a license other than royalties.  I addressed some of this in a 2018 post on MusicTech Solutions that was reposted on Newsmax Finance.]

From: Max Fergus
Date: Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 11:06 AM
Subject:
To: LUM Team

A Letter to the Music Industry,  

Beware, the future of music is in jeopardy.

The Music Licensing Collective (“MLC”) recently announced that it will begin to regulate the largest major music streaming platforms in 2021. However, this agency, formed behind closed doors between the major labels and streaming services themselves, will only hurt those of us who are actively fighting the unjust practices of the platforms that are being regulated in the first place.

The Music Modernization Act is a “competition killer” set out to destroy the platforms that are trying to create a new tomorrow for independent musicians and stifling current and future innovation within the industry.

We are not alone and it’s time to fight. 
Please find our LinkedIn Article here as well as a link to our post
Please share and repost if possible in our fight against the MMA.

___________________________________________
Article Preview
We were told when we started our company that the institutions within the music industry were always going to be against us. In fact, many people told us these institutions would do everything in their power to curb innovation to make sure the money stayed where it always has – in the pockets of the major labels and the major music streaming services.

Finally, after 10 years of archaic practices in the music streaming industry, which widened the financial gap between the one percent of the music industry stakeholders and the rest of the starving artists, the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) was created. At its most basic level, the goal was to take the onus off of major streaming platforms to track and remit royalties generated from these major platforms into the pockets of the right artists/labels in a more timely fashion through a new government-subsidized organization known as the Mechanical Licensing Collective (“MLC”).

Sounds great, right? Wrong. This will set back the music industry for years to come.

Imagine starting a process to MODERNIZE MUSIC and how music is monetized for all artists, yet the only stakeholders the MLC brought in to discuss how the MMA and the MLC would operate are the major streaming platforms and major labels themselves. So, what did they do? They structured the MLC in a way that will save these major corporations millions of dollars while completely neglecting the reason why the law was written in the first place – to oversee the music streaming platforms that have consistently, purposefully and negligently not paid the creators – whose content drives their service – their fair share in a transparent and efficient way.

The MMA was designed to regulate and modernize the practices of “royalty-bearing” music streaming services like Spotify, YouTube, and Apple. Next year, the MLC will open its doors and, as part of its first year of operations, it requires the companies included within the MLC to help pay for “start-up fees.” Companies outside of the largest music streaming companies, such as smaller DSPs and smaller royalty-bearing music streaming platforms, must also share unproportionally in these expenses. Essentially, the MLC and the largest streaming platforms want smaller services to pay more than their fair share for the MLC to oversee and audit the largest players in the music streaming industry…even those services who operate to fix the same problems as the new entity itself.

It gets worse.

Is the MLC Putting Smaller Streaming Platforms Out of Business?

LÜM was created to serve a similar foundational mission to these entities – to help guide an industry that needs to better support its creators through innovation. Because of that, we made a choice to not be a part of the traditional recorded music industry. We pay NO royalties and instead have proven that there is a better future. Instead of royalties, LÜM created the first virtual gifting system in a music discovery platform that allows fans to help directly support their favorite independent artists. The result?

Artists on LÜM earn an average of ~6x more per stream than every single other music streaming platform in the U.S.

Just like so many other companies that are trying to advance the music industry, LÜM is now facing an uphill battle against an organization (MLC) that was developed in conjunction with the same stakeholders who put the music industry in this position in the first place. The fees LÜM and other innovative companies are facing, to help fund the MLC, are substantial. Every new innovative company will face them and will provide a financial hurdle that will leave the majority of current and future innovative music startups dead in the water. No new entrants and no new competition mean the industry will stay exactly where it has for the last 15 years – putting money in the pockets of the rich and neglecting those that are trying to change the industry for the better.

We cannot let this happen. Innovation must continue or we face a scary reality for the music industry and the majority of artists and innovators that have been neglected by it.

— 
Max Fergus | Chief Executive Officer

Check out my favorite song on LÜM Here!

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.

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.

Postdicting the Future: Five Things Congress Could Do for Music Creators That Wouldn’t Cost the Taxpayer a Dime from The Hill

[This is a July 30, 2013 summary from The Hill of my series that first appeared in the Huffington Post on July 26, 2013–let’s see how I did after the Music Modernization Act.]

1.  Create an Audit Right for Songwriters for Compulsory Licenses:  One of the oldest compulsory licenses in the Copyright Act is the “mechanical license”, the statutory mandate forcing songwriters to license songs that dates from 1909.  The government mandates the license and also mandates the rate that songwriters are paid—from 1909 until 1977 that rate was set at 2¢ per recording.  Although that rate was eventually indexed to inflation leading to the current 9.1¢ minimum, songwriters had to dig out of a deep hole.

Getting paid is another story.  This statutory license requires songwriters be sent “statements of account” for royalties—but songwriters are not allowed to conduct a “royalty compliance” examination (called an “audit”).  The law requires a company officer and a CPA to certify the company’s statements—a practice rarely complied with.  As recently demonstrated by Aimee Mann’s lawsuit against Medianet, if songwriters don’t get paid there’s not much they can do except sue—a costly process.

The government tells the songwriter “trust—but don’t verify.”  This is an easy fix.  Congress could give songwriters an audit right as they did for stakeholders in the contemporary digital performance compulsory license for satellite radio and Internet radio.

2.  Allow Artists and Songwriters to Opt Out of the Compulsory License:  The recent blow-up regarding the so-called “Internet Radio Fairness Act” and the related ASCAP and BMI rate court proceedings should let the Congress know that there are many artists and songwriters who want to be able to decide who gets to license their songs.  Again, the digital performance compulsory license allows copyright owners to control “interactive” uses of their works—why not at least do the same for the mechanical license as well?

3. Require Digital Royalties for pre-72 Sound Recordings:  Sound recordings did not receive federal copyright protection until 1972.  When the Congress established the digital performance royalty, it seemed to clearly apply to all recordings and did not arbitrarily exclude recordings prior to 1972.  However, this “gotcha” is used by SiriusXM and others to avoid paying great American artists whose records were released before 1972—jazz, R&B and rock legends get nothing.  Congress could fix this “gotcha” and secure a fair share of digital performance royalties to these authors of our musical heritage.

4.  Require All Unpaid Statutory Mechanical Royalties Be Paid to the State Unclaimed Property Offices:  As Aimee Mann’s alleged in her lawsuit against the white label provider Medianet, witnesses stated that 23 percent of the songs used by Medianet are unlicensed—which could easily be millions of songs if true.  And there are likely a number of digital music services that are arbitrarily holding unpaid royalties in an unauthorized “escrow.”

It seems that there could be substantial royalties controlled by the very retailers who must pay songwriters under the law, a potentially significant moral hazard.  Congress could require that any “escrowed” royalties be paid over under State unclaimed property laws—a lawful “escrow.”

5.  Require that Online and Offline Videos Follow the Same Rules:  As online video platforms become available through Internet enabled home televisions, attention should be paid to a frequently overlooked category of songwriter—the film and television music composers.  Current reporting by online video platforms makes it difficult for score composers to be paid for their work.  The Congress may well ask whether those who seek to replace television should be held to the same licensing standards as television.

These are but a few ideas the Congress could be addressing that might make a difference in the lives of artists and songwriters and would cost the taxpayer very little.  All leverage existing structures and bureaucracies, eliminate “gotchas,” and help to reduce the unintended consequences of government mandated compulsory licensing.

What Does the New MLC Candidate Mean for the Copyright Office?

Nate Rau reports in The Tennessean that there is a new group competing to be the “Mechanical Licensing Collective” under the Music Modernization Act.  I would expect there will be at least one more group come forward in the coming weeks.  This competition was easy to expect, but it does call to account the short time frames for setting up the MLC in the Music Modernization Act.  Those time frames fail to take into account the potential delaying effects of competition.

Multiple competitors also suggests that whoever wins the designation of the Copyright Office should be looking over their shoulder before the 5 year review of the MLC’s performance by the Copyright Office.  It’s likely that whoever is the runner-up in that designation pageant will still be around and may be critical of the winner when that 5 year review comes around.

It’s also worth noting that no one seems to be very interested in the music services’ counterpart to the MLC, being the “Digital Licensee Coordinator” or the “DLC”.  Whoever ends up getting to be the DLC is also going to be subject to a 5 year review, likely to be side by side with the MLC’s review.

As it now seems like there may be hard feelings on the part of the runner up for the MLC, this would be a good time for the Copyright Office to come up with objective criteria for both the selection of a winner and the definition of success when the 5 year review comes up.  It appears from the statutory language that Congress intends for the Copyright Office to come up with these criteria, and the clearer and more transparent the criteria, the less likely it will be for hard feelings to result in a meltdown.

The review of both the MLC and the DLC are governed by the same language in the Music Modernization Act:

Following the initial designation of the [mechanical licensing collective/digital licensee coordinator], the Register shall, every 5 years, beginning with the fifth full calendar year to commence after the initial designation, publish notice in the Federal Register in the month of January soliciting information concerning whether the existing designation should be continued, or a different entity meeting the criteria described in clauses (i) through (iii) of subparagraph (A) shall be designated. Following publication of such notice, the Register shall—

“(I) after reviewing the information submitted and conducting additional proceedings as appropriate, publish notice in the Federal Register of a continuing designation or new designation of the [mechanical licensing collective/digital licensee coordinator], as the case may be, and the reasons for such a designation, with any new designation to be effective as of the first day of a month that is not less than 6 months and not longer than 9 months after the date on which the Register publishes the notice, as specified by the Register; and

“(II) if a new entity is designated as the [mechanical licensing collective/digital licensee coordinator], adopt regulations to govern the transfer of licenses, funds, records, data, and administrative responsibilities from the existing mechanical licensing collective to the new entity.

The Congressional mandate to the Copyright Office is very broad–“soliciting information” could mean just about anything even remotely germane.  Given that the Copyright Office is to designate each of these crucially important offices empowered by Congress and to then measure their competency five years from now, it does seem that the Copyright Office would do well to give both the MLC and the DLC notice of what’s expected of each of them, and to do so before the designation is made.

For example, record keeping regarding customer service responsiveness, accuracy of the ownership database, overbudget or underbudget spending, complaints by songwriters, matching rates, number of audits of services undertaken, audit recoveries and distributions and executive compensation might all be relevant in the case of the MLC.

Some of these same criteria might be relevant for the DLC, although the DLC would have its own issues not common to the MLC.  These might include responsiveness of the DLC to potential blanket licensees, confidential treatment of competitive information, fair allocation of the assessment and communication with all licensees, especially the significant nonblanket licensees.

The Copyright Office would do well to recall the “seven anonymous amici” from the Microsoft antitrust litigation who were so dependent on Microsoft and so afraid of retaliation that they could not even use their own names to file an amicus brief in the case.  If the Copyright Office intends to have a candid assessment of either the MLC or the DLC, it might be a good idea to make an anonymous comment process available to competitors who fear retaliation.

If the Copyright Office makes a nonexhaustive list of qualities that constitute a successful completion of the five year trial period at the beginning of that period rather than the end, it might make succesful completion more likely.

Save the Date! NYC Music Business & Law Conference November 16

I’m honored to be included in a panel at the New York State Bar Association’s annual Music Business & Law Conference on November 16 with truly awesome panelists.

11:50am-12:50 pm      Music Modernization Act (US) / International Developments

The Music Modernization Act could be the most consequential copyright legislation in a generation. This panel will describe what it does, what it doesn’t do, how it affects current business and legal practices, and its effect on domestic and international copyright holders.  Bring your questions.

Panelists:
Marc Jacobson, Esq. (Moderator)
Chris Castle, Esq. – CC Legal Firm and Music Tech Solutions Blog
Charlie Sanders, Esq. – Counsel-Songwriters Guild of America
Alexander Ross, Esq. – Wiggin LLP (UK)
Christine Pepe, Esq. (IP, Music, and Digital Law Consultant)

Read Highlights of Managing Change Under the Music Modernization Act’s Music Licensing Collective in the current issue of the Texas Entertainment & Sports Law Section Journal by Chris Castle.

Read Meet the New Boss:  Tech Giants Rely on Loopholes to Avoid Paying Statutory Royalties with Mass Filings of NOIs at the Copyright Office from the American Bar Association, Entertainment & Sports Lawyer (Spring 2017) by Chris Castle.

 

Saddle Up: The Role of the Copyright Office Examiners in the “Noncommercial Use” of Pre-1972 Recordings under the Music Modernization Act

Now I never said that Music Modernization Act was a self-licking ice cream cone.  That was someone else.  Neither did I say it was the gift that keeps on giving.  That wouldn’t have been me–it’s just getting started, after all.  Too soon.

We are now having a look at the first of what will no doubt be many, many regulations to be issued by the Copyright Office that will actually implement the MMA.  Wakey wakey.

Thanks to Senator Ron Wyden’s last minute looney tunes shakedown when the MMA was limping across the finish line in the Senate,  the Copyright Office has circulated a notice of inquiry for the first MMA regulations promulgated by the Copyright Office.  This time it’s regulations under Title II of the MMA for the new “license” request for “noncommercial” uses of pre-72 sound recordings.   Never heard of this “license” before?  Didn’t know it was in the MMA?  Get used to it.  If you’re like most people, you didn’t read the 200 page MMA before it passed, but you would do well to read it very carefully now that it is the law of the land.

The coming wave of regulations to be released by the Copyright Office will be your last chance to eject from the twilight zone–but file it under “M” for “maybe”.  Because the die is cast and the Rubicon is crossed.

It must be said, of course, that the only reason we are having this discussion is because Google’s data farming Senator Ron Wyden threatened to put a hold on the MMA literally at the 11th hour and conducted an entirely predictable but no less grotesque legislative shakedown that is so typical of his Wydeness.

This didn’t come from the members of the House of Representatives who voted unanimously for the pure CLASSICS Act and it didn’t come from the other 99 members of the Senate who would have voted for the same House bill.  No, this came from Senator Wyden and his motley crew from Public Knowledge, aka the Google shillery, the nutty professors and, we must assume, with the blessing of at some of the members of the Digital Media Association.

I want you to remember that after the entire industry burns thousands of productivity hours (not to mention lawyer time) in trying to define this stick in the eye.  This is pure Google and pure, unadulterated Wyden.  (We might call this the “Wyden loophole” but when it comes to loopholes, Senator Wyden is as fecund as the shad so that description wouldn’t narrow it down much.)  Plus it’s the kind of “registration-based” thinking that is straight out of the Samuelson “Copyright Principles Project” and the much ballyhooed American Law Institute Restatement of Copyright, not to mention Lessig and Sprigman.  But after all the handwringing, the pre-72 license is a big victory for the Restatement crowd and it’s the law of the land.

So–the MMA includes a Google “license” request for pre-72 recordings that allows a sound recording owner of a pre-72 recording to approve or disapprove a request for a noncommercial use of that recording.  Sounds simple, right?  Not so simple as the Copyright Office notice of inquiry confirms.  It’s a ridiculously complicated loophole that may ultimately lead to no license being issued–and that’s when the handwringing will really begin.

However ridiculous this whole thing is, it is the law, so we must deal with it.  We will have more to say about the proposed regulation in coming days, but a couple points jump right out–most importantly, the obligation on the user to clear the song in the recording before burdening either the Copyright Office or the sound recording copyright owner with a no-money clearance request.

Realize that there are at least two copyrights in any sound recording–the song being performed (the “©”) and the recording of that song (the “℗”).  The “pre-72” issue only applies to the sound recording copyright–which did not enjoy federal copyright protection prior to 1972.  (The MMA gives a partial federalization of state law copyright–beyond the scope of this post.)

But–musical works (aka songs) enjoyed all kinds of federal copyright protection prior to 1972, so the fact that a sound recording might be subject to the new loophole created by Senator Wyden says nothing about the song.  So how does this fit together?

First, the Copyright Office needs to play a real vetting role in this process before the sound recording copyright owner even receives the request and there should be no direct communications between user and copyright owner.  Let’s not repeat the mass “address unknown” NOI mistake.

Recall that the Copyright Office failed to vet any of the millions of “address unknown” NOIs for compulsory song licenses which allowed many of those notices to be filed improperly (in the millions, I would guess which sure sounds like a crime).   This was such a debacle that it gave Big Tech a leg up in passing the MMA, rather than fix the mistake.  We do not need a repeat performance of that catastrophe or even a curtain call.

But perhaps more importantly, there is no reason for anyone to spend a minute on these requests unless the user requesting the pre-72 license for a pre-72 sound recording can show that they have already obtained the rights for any musical work embodied in the pre-72 sound recording.  All those hidden costs were well-covered in the CBO review of the MMA…oh, wait.  They weren’t at all.

And, of course, when the MMA’s super-duper global rights database for every musical work ever written or that ever may be written is up and running in less than two years from now, it will be super duper easy to find these pre-72 songs, right?  For free?

So why should anyone spend any time on a sound recording request if the song rights have not already been obtained since the sound recording is unusable without the song clearance and the song license is not included in the Wyden loophole? (So presumably an arms length market rate unless a compulsory license applies depending on the use, say sync or mechanical.)  And there’s certainly no reason for a user to pay a Copyright Office examiner to review an application that cannot be consummated because the user has been unable to obtain the song rights.  That would be unfair to the user.

If the user wishes to assert fair use as a defense to the rights of the song owner, then presumably they’d also assert fair use against the sound recording owner, too, so they problaby would not even apply.

Hence every application for the pre-72 use would almost by definition require a song license unless the work is already in the public domain (such as recordings of the traditional classical repertoire).  Determining whether the song is in the public domain is exactly the kind of work the user should be paying the Copyright Office examiner to confirm.

So I’d say this “song first” approach makes sense, although I’m willing to be educated otherwise.

 

HFA is Getting Blamed Unfairly

 

afriendinneed
A Friend In Need

When you’ve been around as long as the Harry Fox Agency, you’re going to make some enemies, screw some things up, over react and over reach.  You’re also going to do a lot of things right, make some friends and do some good.  But most of all, you’re going to be the whipping boy for your client’s enemies, screwups, overreacting and over reaching.

From one whipping boy to another, that’s just not fair and anyone who has ever tried to do anything really hard with data in the music business knows it.  So pish and pshaw on those who gang up on HFA in the debate on the Music Modernization Act.  Let’s look at the facts.

When HFA developed the first digital download mechanical license in the late 1990s, the current crop of critics were nowhere to be seen.  Was it a perfect solution?  Not entirely, no.  But it did work and business got done and songwriters made money.  We were all feeling our way along the digital precipice and making it up as we went along.

I will go out on a limb here and say that if it weren’t for people like HFA’s Ed Murphy, it’s entirely possible that there would be no “streaming mechanical” at all.  That would be the same Ed Murphy who stepped up and licensed Napster’s effort at a p2p subscription service in 2001.  Again, the current crop of critics were nowhere to be seen.

Here’s another fact that you won’t hear about.  When it came time to mete out justice to a massive infringer record company who had been ripping off Texas singer-songwriters for years and years, it was HFA who stood with us.  Not because they made money, not because there was some pot of gold for them–there wasn’t and they didn’t.

They did it because it was the right thing to do.

They may not be choir boys, but they have their moments.  When we really needed them, they showed up for Texas songwriters.  And that’s how we measure friendship in my part of the world.

HFA is often blamed for the Spotify meltdown which in its own way led directly to the controversial safe harbor in the Music Modernization Act.  You can tell that’s true because the MMA’s proponents never talk about the safe harbor except to say that they negotiated away the rights of all the world’s songwriters in some “grand bargain,” the grandness of which elludes me almost as much as the legitimacy of consent.

The fact that Spotify chose to go forward without all the rights necessary to do business is not HFA’s fault.  It is Spotify’s fault.  If Spotify has an issue with HFA, that’s between them.  Ultimately, Spotify knew what it was doing and I seriously, seriously doubt that HFA told them otherwise.  I won’t believe it without both pictures and tapes.

Another fact is that the clearance problems that Spotify and some other HFA clients have were set in motion well before SESAC’s acquisition of HFA in 2015.   If anything, HFA’s been doing it better and cleaner after the acquisition in my opinion.  So if there is blame to go around, then the blame should go all the way around.

You may hear some pretty nasty comments about HFA now that its parent’s parent company is lobbying for a seat at the table on the Music Modernization Act.  Pay them no mind.  If SESAC and HFA had been dealt in at the beginning of the MMA process–which it sounds like they were not along with a lot of other people who should have been there, too–then there’d be some actual evidence that they were reneging on a commitment instead of no evidence that a commitment was ever made.  If you’re going to bet the farm, don’t take silence as consent.

Bashing HFA won’t fix the failure to include them, and I for one think it’s really unfair.  The solution isn’t dealing them out, the solution is embracing SESAC and HFA by respecting their efforts to make MMA a better bill that will have a greater chance of flourishing.