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| The Turtles |
The Turtles are leading a $100 million lawsuit against
SiriusXM, arguing that the satellite broadcasting company has infringed on
millions of older recordings from thousands of artists, and that Sirius cannot
rely on section 114 of the US Copyright Act for protection – as pre 1972
recordings are subject to state law – which may arguably mean that Sirius plays
songs recorded before that date without permission. The suit, brought under the California Civil Code, and led
by vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman (later known as Flo and Eddie whose company leads the action and owns copyrights in a number of Turtle's sound recordings) was filed on August 1
in the Los Angeles Superior Court and is proposed as a class action.
Are the Turtles' "Let Me Be" (1966), "You Baby" (1966), "Happy Together" (Billboard Hot 100 Number 1 in 1967), "Elenore" and "You Showed Me" (both peaking at No. 6 in 1969) and their
well-known 1965 cover of Bob Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe" protected against
unauthorised plays by Californian state law (Californian Civil Code S980(a)(2)? Sirius does
currently pay compensation for the use of sound recordings (unlike terrestrial stations
in the USA) at a rate set by the Copyright Royalty Board and the non-profit
SoundExchange collects and distributes these royalties. Whether they collect
for heritage acts is another matter – it seems Sirius did not, until recently, log
or report all plays and does not report tracks played from before 1972 (meaning
the recording artists and indeed their labels seemingly don’t get paid!).
Interestingly in
April this year in the 'Grooveshark' litigation, a New York state appeals court ruled that the safe harbour provisions
of the Digital Millennium Copyright did not extend to per-1972 recordings as
this was when Congress first recognized a federal copyright for sound
recordings – although as Iona pointed out in her blog at the time, this flies in
the face of previous decisions: last year, the Manhattan Supreme Court relied
on the 2011 federal ruling in Capitol Records v. MP3tunes, to find "no
indication in the text of the DMCA that Congress intended to limit the reach of
the safe harbors provided by the statute to just post-1972 recordings."
Spin reports that The Turtles have a history of taking disputes to court.
The band sued their own label in 1971, citing accounting irregularities, and
ended up earning the rights to their songs' original masters. Many years later, they
filed suit against De La Soul for damages of $1.7 million over a 1989 sample of the Turtle's 1969 hit "You Showed Me." That case was settled out of
court.
Well Turtles, you could always actually write and record some new music if you wAnt more money. You probably already made millions from the stuff you did 40 years ago.
ReplyDeleteThe legal battle against US satellite radio firm Sirius XM is hotting up, as all three major labels have now filed litigation against the media company over its use of pre-1972 catalogue. The majors - Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music - are now following their lead, taking their case to the California Superior Court. US collection society SoundExchange is also suing Sirius, because it says the satellite radio service has been deducting royalties from what it pays the rights agency based on the percentage of its musical output that predates 1972 (about 10-15%).
ReplyDeleteTo give context to the first comment posted here I would suggest this: Steve Cropper, guitarist with Booker T & The MGs, who as the house band of Stax Records appeared on countless sixties recordings, said: "It's an outrage that SiriusXM, a multi-billion [dollar] company making a big profit based partly on the popularity of its oldies channels is refusing to pay any artists like me one penny. That's not right and that needs to be changed".