Recently, on December 12, 2023, the Copyright Royalty Judges announced a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase in the mechanical royalty rates for the 17 U.S.C. §115 statutory license for making and distributing phonorecords of nondramatic musical works regarding physical phonorecords and Permanent Downloads. The new rate is 12.40 cents per reproduction or 2.39 cents per [...]
People don't pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the wine will make the skins burst, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. -Mark 2:22 Article 1, Section 8,Clause 8 of the United States Constitution is the starting point for any discussion of intellectual property, and in this specific case [...]
By Amber Rose and Barry Shrum If you've cruised the net or checked out your local news any time within the last few months, chances are you've heard rumors currently sweeping the United States about two pieces of proposed legislation : H.R. 3261 entitled the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”) and S. 968 entitled the [...]
By Rachel Galloway IMPORTANT NOTICE: The views expressed in this article are solely those of Ms. Galloway and may not necessarily reflect the views of Law on the Row or Barry Neil Shrum, Esquire. The last time I watched a Happy Tree Friends video was when I was around 13 years old in the company [...]
A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators... and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business. -Bono (New York Times, January 2010) March 11, 2011. The passage of the [...]
Mark Twain had a lot to say about statistics, ranking them as the highest of all lies: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Twain is also attributed with the more insinuated saying that “statistics are like ladies of the evening, once you get them down, you do anything with them!” [...]
NBC Universal recently hired a company called Envisional to study counterfeiting activity over the Internet. The results of this study – despite the fact that it is industry funded – are literally astonishing: 24% of all global Internet traffic involves digital theft! Stated another way, one in every four people surfing the Internet are stealing [...]
Since before the day that Napster was a twinkle in Sean Parker’s eye – well over a decade ago now – the legal and music industries have each struggled with ways to cope with and transform their dusty old business models from the physical status quo to the digital revolution.
By Nathan Drake & Barry Neil Shrum Warner Music Group's ("WMG") year-end financial reports for 2010 came as little surprise when you take into account two factors: (1) the general economic downturn in the U.S. and (2) the continued piracy in the global music industry. See the report on WMG’s website here. WMG has been [...]
Abraham Maslow’s famous “hierarchy of needs” places self-actualization as the pinnacle of human behavior. To illustrate what the phrase "self-actualization" meant , Maslow said: “a musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves.” Of course, the thing that is important to [...]
