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| 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".
The Global Repertoire Database (GRD) – the project that aims to catalogue the world’s music – has announced that it will set up its global headquarters in London and will base its operations centre in Berlin.
The London office, housing corporate functions and business development capabilities is scheduled to open later in 2013, and will work alongside the current London-based project team in the first instance. The Berlin operations centre will provide registrations and data processing facilities, and may provide a template for further operations centres to support the global operation as it grows.
When completed, the main aim will be to create a new and more effective global infrastructure for music rights management, leading to an improved path to music licensing for digital and other music services, and to efficiency benefits for the whole music ecosystem saving extensive costs currently lost to duplication in data processing.
Alfons Karabuda, President of ECSA, the European Composer & Songwriter Alliance, said, ‘We are happy to have a home for the Global Repertoire Database. These two great cities of Berlin and London with their proud heritage and strong support for authors’ rights and for copyright will serve our needs very well. We can now turn our attention to building the world’s first authoritative database of musical works and to creating a completely new system of rights management that will benefit creators globally.’
Kenth Muldin, Chair of CISAC, the organisation representing the world’s copyright management societies, said, ‘The Global Repertoire Database is necessary for the effective functioning of the rights licensing, management and royalty payment systems of musical works in the 21st century. A single, authoritative global view of music ownership in real time will mean that anyone wanting to set up a music service can do so more quickly – and that means more legal choice for music fans and consumers, and a more efficient way of identifying who should be paid royalties for the use of their music.’
The next stage of development in the GRD project is the technical build, during which the systems and processes required for the new database to interact with existing licensing and payment systems will be structured. GRD systems will be fully compliant with existing rights management solutions FastTrack and ICE, who are technology partners in the project.
www.globalrepertoiredatabase.com
Progress on the creation of a Global Repertoire Database (GRD) for musical works has moved ahead
strongly over the past twelve months with the completion of the Scoping Study and
the commencement of the Requirements and Design Phase according to a new press
release, which also says that 2013 will
mark some important milestones in the realisation of the project.
The scope of the GRD is to provide a single, comprehensive and
authoritative representation of the global ownership and control of musical
works. Once deployed the GRD will "save extensive costs, currently lost to
duplication in data processing". Delivery of the project is driven
by the GRD Working Group: This consists of representatives from 14
organisations of creators, publishers, collective management societies, digital
service providers and their trade associations –APRA,
GEMA, PRS for Music, SACEM, STIM, CISAC, Sony/ATV/EMI Music Publishing,
Universal Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, ICMP, ECSA, Google, iTunes
and Omnifone. In all, nearly 30 companies represented by
nearly 100 individuals are directly involved in the work worldwide. Thirteen collective management
societies for music are supporting the project with funding, knowledge and
access to their databases and these are APRA, GEMA. PRS, STIM and SACEM as well as ASCAP, BMI, SGAE,
SIAE, UBC, BUMA, SABAM and SOCAN. The project is managed by Deloitte with
support from ICE and FastTrack as technology solution providers.
Andrew Jenkins, Chair of ICMP
(International Confederation of Music Publishers) commented: “ICMP and its
music publisher members around the world are committed to the development of
the Global Repertoire Database which will benefit all those who have a stake in
improved music licensing processes including creators, music publishers,
collecting societies, music suppliers and fans of music everywhere. Indeed, it
is impossible to argue against the benefits of the GRD for the wider community
and all of us involved are working together to deliver something that will be a
game-changer for the industry".
A series of distinct project
phases have been completed thus far and the period since March 2012 has been
spent ensuring that all parties are comfortable with the way forward and
putting the necessary structures in place. Work on the
Requirements and Design phase of the project began in October 2012 and will run
until May 2013. During this project phase, focus will be on the business
requirements and rules of the database including a definition of standards for
works, agreements and repertoire mandates as well as definition of the GRD
logical data model.
Robert Ashcroft Chief Executive
of PRS for Music said “The Global
Repertoire Database is the building block for the future success of the legal
online music market. PRS for Music has supported the project from the outset
and we are committed to making the initiative work for the benefit of rights
holders and rights users globally".
GRD will be set up as a legal entity during the project phase, the
business plan will be completed and the logical technology architecture for the
system will be defined. In mid-2013, the project will move into the technology build,
with a first release of the database due in 2015.
http://globalrepertoiredatabase.com/
