Cultura Voice

Do you remember when the music industry was clawing at YouTube’s throat? C’mon; it hasn’t been  that  long. Three years ago, for example, then-RIAA boss Cary Sherman was claiming: “It makes no sense that it takes a thousand on-demand streams of a song for creators to earn $1 on YouTube, while services like Apple and Spotify pay creators $7 or more for those same streams.” More recently, of course, there’s been the battle over Article 13 (now 17) in Europe – the legislation aiming to make digital services legally responsible for copyright infringement on their platforms. Having slammed YouTube for its supposed “carpet-bombing propaganda” ahead of the vote on Article 13 (and the Copyright Directive) by European lawmakers, a raft of music biz orgs brought out the bunting when, in April last year, the European Council gave the bill the green light. Now, thanks to Brexit, UK politicians now say Article 13/17 won’t actually be adopted in Britain after all. ...

A recent Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) ruling brought great news for songwriters in the US – with royalty rates for streaming and other mechanical uses set to rise 44% in the market. Spotify and Amazon have now officially come out in opposition to the ruling, in what the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) has called a “shameful” move which equates to “suing songwriters”. On January 27, 2018  on the CRB’s landmark decision, which stated that royalty rates paid to songwriters in the US from on-demand subscription streaming would rise by 44% over the next five years. That decision was ratified last month (February 5), when the CRB published the final rates and terms for songwriters. Streaming companies were given 30 days to lodge official opposition to the ruling if they wished. The likes of Apple Music declined to do so – but it’s a different case for Spotify and Amazon, which have now both filed a notice of appeal. Pandora and Google have also asked the CR...

How do you know when a copyright has been infringed? For years, this wasn’t even a question people asked in China because it was so obvious. The guys on the corner with carts full of bootleg CDs and DVDs, the illegal BitTorrents and download sites – all of them were wantonly and flagrantly engaging in copyright infringement. Indeed, infringement was their business model. If they weren’t offering copies of copyrighted works, nobody would be interested. Slowly but surely, though, China’s enforcement of copyright infringement has improved – in large part because large Chinese companies like Baidu and Alibaba and Tencent now control the rights to a great deal of content and  their  business models are based on people not getting such content for free somewhere else. The BAT companies have turned to Chinese agencies and courts to enforce their rights, evidenced by a concomitant surge in copyright-related litigation. We wrote about this last year in Copyright Protection in C...