Of the issues that have bedeviled the music industry, perhaps the most insidious has been that of transparency, or, more accurately, a lack thereof. In…
Two exclusive rights of copyright are at the heart of the worldwide business of music. They involve musical compositions and sound recordings, the rights of…
Sampling has been controversial from the very start. Supporters of the practice argue that artists sample songs they love and build on them to create their…
2013 marked the first year that sound recording and musical composition copyrights could revert from labels and publishers, respectively, to artists and songwriters. The Copyright…
Fair use has always been a contentious concept. A great number of musicians, as well as artists of other varieties, include copyrighted material in their…
“All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It, and he said as much in other plays. The public performance of creative…
For more than a year now the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet has been conducting a series of hearings as…
Certain sound recordings from decades ago are still considered commercially viable today. In fact, songs by Frank Sinatra, Etta James, and the Beatles are still…
What do Tom Petty, Bryan Adams, Tom Waits, Kris Kristofferson, and Bob Dylan all have in common? They released iconic albums that generated millions of…
This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth. The writer was also a tireless advocate for a global copyright framework. But it…
The Mayans were partially right when they predicted something drastic would happen at the end of 2012. Yet even if the mystery of the world…
On October 3rd 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear the case of American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)…