Universal sues MySpace for copyright violations

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These aren't contracts and you failed to recognize what you read

The links I provided go directly to the US copyright act. Did you not notice the .gov in each link. Those links are the US Copyright Act (Title 17) in its most current form hosted on the US Government's own web servers.

Second you don't understand the definition of compulsory.

# required by rule; "in most schools physical education is compulsory"; "attendance is mandatory"; "required reading"

# required by rule or by law.


These compulsory license are not contracts and they last as long as the copyright lasts- after the copyright expires no royalty needs be paid at all!. To top them off they are required by copyright law. The Labels have no choice in the matter- None. The copyright law requires them.

The way you describe it is not the way it works at all!

The government sets the rate and anyone who wishes to broadcast through radio (Section 114), make and distribute CDs (115), publicly distribute through juke boxes (116), produces a digital audio recorder/digital audio recording medium (1003) pays the statutory royalty to the government/the agency selected by the government to collect said fees (read the law) who then distributes it to artist.

The government selected Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel sets the royalty and not the copyright holders (In respect to sections 114-116 however section 1003 has a flat set royalty in the law) which can be found in chapter 8 of the copyright act http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap8.html . This however does not preclude you from negotiating your own royalty. In fact before applying for a compulsory license you are suppose to try to negotiate a rate on your own- if you fail to negotiate successfully a rate that is amicable to both parties then you apply for the compulsory license, pay the proscribed royalty, and are done with it.

The content holders don't get a choice. Copyright law has this written into it.

What has been proposed is that the compulsory licenses get expanded beyond their current scope to include everything on the internet.

This has been proposed for 2 reasons;

1. ISPs can not self police themselves, due to copyright being automatic and opt-out without a registration being required, this means there is no list of what exactly is copyrighted and to whom, and ISPs/webhosts have a get out of jail free card in the form of the Safe harbor provision of the DMCA.

2. They can't control the masses from uploading. You catch one then someone else just uploads it. Shut down one site/service 15 others appear to replace it. The penalty BTW is already 5 years in jail for the first offense and 10 years for subsequent offenses plus a fine of $150,000 per work copied.

Where fair use comes into play is that recording your TV and transferring music to your MP3 player have already been decided as fair use. The entertainment companies will tell you otherwise now.

What they want is ;

1. ISPs/web host be liable for all copyright infringements incurred by their subscribers, in effect doing away with section 512. This way they can offer the ISPs indemnification but small content producers/individuals would be unable to do so. They thus would be the only one to offer content on the internet thus forcing bands to sign contracts where the artist receives less than a nickel per $.99 download and that's only after they pay back the money paid to them for the contract.

2. They want consumers to pay for every device they may want to play their media on. Want to play the song on your CDin your car- have to pay for the music again, play on your stereo -pay up, play on your Mp3 player- pay again, ect ect.

They also want to ban home recorders and make it difficult for you to create your own content.

Posted by: Edward Meyers   Posted on: 11/19/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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