Editors Note: The following is a research paper from one of the students in my Entertainment Law & Licensing class I teach at Belmont University’s Curb School of Music. By G. GRANT GUINANE On July 30, 1998 Tivo Inc. registered a patent for their multimedia time warping system that allows a user to store selected [...]
The U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled against LimeWire and its parent company, Lime Group, finding them liable for inducement of copyright infringement based on the use of their service by subscribers. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued the 59-page decision Wednesday, siding with the 13 record companies that [...]
What songwriters can do to protect their ideas when submitting demo tapes to publishers Every songwriter has heard the words "sorry, we’re not accepting unsolicited material" from at least a dozen publishers. In fact, in a recent informal survey conducted by Law On the Row, two-thirds of the thirty publishing companies contacted indicated that they [...]
Link to Politico Interview As a follow up to my previous post on the subject, the radio widget above should play Politico’s interview with Smashing Pumpkin’s founder and frontman Billy Corgan following his testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee in support of HR 848, the Performance Rights Act. Corgan testified on Capitol Hill [...]
The House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on H.R. 848 (this year’s version of HR 4789) tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. Although the Committee’s website does not identify any witnesses at this time, I am informed by musicFIRST that Smashing Pumpkins’ founder Billy Corgan and Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the RIAA will be [...]
When big events like the Country Radio Seminar occur, Music Row begins to buzz with various activities and talk about the celebrities. The Country Radio Seminar is an annual convention designed to educate and promote the exchange of ideas in the country music industry. This year marks the event’s 40th anniversary and it promises to [...]
Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster once penned one of my favorite lyrics in the song Me and Bobby McGee, i.e., “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” The sentiment is perhaps appropriate for the ongoing war that is being waged against copyright laws as we know them. The latest battle in this war [...]
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The trial in Capital v. Thomas was one of the first stories I began tracking over a year ago. See Jury Awards RIAA $222,000 against Thomas: My Thoughts on the Verdict and Jammie Thomas to appeal verdict in RIAA Litigation. Now, in a decision issued on September 24, 2008 - only eight days shy of [...]
On August 7th, a lawsuit was filed by Kristen Alison Hall, former member of the country band, Sugarland, against the remaining original members of the band, Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush. A copy of the complaint can be viewed here. Essentially, the lawsuit alleges that Nettles and Bush breached a partnership agreement between the three [...]
