The CopyKat - waving a goodbye paw for Mike, the GRD, Aereo's old business model, and the World Cup.

Mike Weatherley MP

Mike Weatherley MP, who has been particularly vocal on music business and intellectual property issues in his time in the UK Parliament, has announced he will not re-stand at next year's General Election. The Member of Parliament for Hove and Portslade since 2010, Weatherley worked in both the music and film industries before entering politics. He has been very involved in the All Party Parliamentary Groups on music and ticketing, and last year became the IP Advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron - as well as running the 'Rock The House' band competition which saw winners pay live in the Speaker's Rooms at the House of Commons in London. Commenting, Mike said: “This has been an exceptionally difficult decision to make. It has been a remarkable opportunity to represent the wonderful residents of Hove and Portslade in Parliament and I look forward to continuing to do this until the election near year.” Mike recently successfully battled cancer.

Indian TV company Multi Screen Media, a Sony subsidiary, has secured wide ranging web-block injunction in the Indian courts forcing internet service providers in the country to block some 219 websites - although the original legal filing last month reportedly targeted 479 offending online services who were illegally streaming FIFA World Cup programmes. Rather than targeting the sites, Multi Screen looked for blocking order(s) and the judge in the case said "Learned counsel for the plaintiff submits that many of the websites [in the list] are anonymous in nature and it is virtually impossible to locate the owners of such websites or contact details of such owners. It is further submitted that many of these rogue websites also hide behind domain privacy services offered by various domain name registrars".


Variety reports that following its defeat at the Supreme Court, Aereo is pursuing a new legal strategy in an effort to keep its broadcast streaming business alive. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan on Wednesday, Aereo’s legal team is claiming that it is eligible for the same statutory license that cable companies pay in providing broadcast transmissions to their subscribers. Aereo cites the Supreme Court majority opinion, which was rooted in the idea that because Aereo was “substantially similar to” a cable system, it fell under provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act that target such multichannel distributors and is "proceeding to file the necessary statements of account and royalty fees”.

UK collecting society PRS For Music has confirmed that the much anticipated Global Repertoire Database - a central database for musical works - has run been scrapped, though said that it remained "committed to the principles of a single point of works registration" and hoped lessons learned from the GRD could be employed in future song ownership data ventures. CMU Daily reports that the GRD was initially backed by all the big publishers, most of the significant music collecting societies, and some of the digital players who need access to the data. ICE, the joint venture between PRS For Music and Swedish collecting society STIM, was appointed as a technology provider, Deloitte were handed the business development role but recent missed self imposed deadlines and this week sources told Music Week that after £8 million in investment, the venture had been "scrapped due to a fall-out of collection societies over funding".