Performance Rights Act

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Performance Rights Act
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Long titleA bill to provide fair compensation to artists for use of their sound recordings.
Acronyms (colloquial)Performance Rights Act
Legislative history

On February 4, 2009, Congressman John Conyers, Jr. introduced H.R. 848, the Performance Rights Act in the U.S. House of Representatives, 111th Congress. The Bill was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and on December 14, 2010, it was placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 405. Under this Bill's version, performance rights was broadly designed to protect the civil rights of minority, religious, rural, and small communities with components to public access and education.

Contents

Musician George Clinton has spearheaded the H.R. 848 initiative through his foundation, Mothership Connection Education Foundation, with public awareness educational campaigns on copyright recapturing and reclaiming royalties for children of civil rights era musical performers.[ citation needed ]

The Performance Rights Act is an amendment to United States copyright law proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy. The bill would expand the protection for public performances of copyrighted sound recordings. [1]

Under the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act, sound recordings have a limited public performance right in digital transmissions, such as webcasting. [2] This bill would expand the performance right to cover terrestrial broadcasts, such as AM/FM radio. The bill is both strongly contested and supported. [1] Artists who support the bill argue that it properly compensates performing artists. [3] Broadcasters who oppose the bill argue that the performance right is unnecessary and overly burdensome. [4]

Previous Bills

In 2007, Howard Berman proposed legislation (H.R.4789) entitled the Performing Rights Act. That bill included a provision to establish a flat fee for non-profit radio stations, or stations that make less than $1.25 million in gross revenue. Still, broadcasters opposed this bill because of the potential increase in transaction costs for operating a radio station. [5]

Related Research Articles

A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or a fixed price per unit sold of an item of such, but there are also other modes and metrics of compensation. A royalty interest is the right to collect a stream of future royalty payments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright law of Canada</span>

The copyright law of Canada governs the legally enforceable rights to creative and artistic works under the laws of Canada. Canada passed its first colonial copyright statute in 1832 but was subject to imperial copyright law established by Britain until 1921. Current copyright law was established by the Copyright Act of Canada which was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988, 1997, and 2012. All powers to legislate copyright law are in the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada by virtue of section 91(23) of the Constitution Act, 1867.

The Copyright Act of Canada is the federal statute governing copyright law in Canada. It is jointly administered by the Department of Industry Canada and the Department of Canadian Heritage. The Copyright Act was first passed in 1921 and substantially amended in 1988 and 1997. Several attempts were made between 2005 and 2011 to amend the Act, but each of the bills failed to pass due to political opposition. In 2011, with a majority in the House of Commons, the Conservative Party introduced Bill C-11, titled the Copyright Modernization Act. Bill C-11 was passed and received Royal Assent on June 29, 2012.

A compulsory license provides that the owner of a patent or copyright licenses the use of their rights against payment either set by law or determined through some form of adjudication or arbitration. In essence, under a compulsory license, an individual or company seeking to use another's intellectual property can do so without seeking the rights holder's consent, and pays the rights holder a set fee for the license. This is an exception to the general rule under intellectual property laws that the intellectual property owner enjoys exclusive rights that it may license – or decline to license – to others.

APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers in Australia and New Zealand. The two organisations work together to license public performances and administer performance, communication and reproduction rights on behalf of their members, who are creators of musical works, aiming to ensure fair payments to members and to defend their rights under the Australian Copyright Act (1968).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Act of 1909</span>

The Copyright Act of 1909 was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; but some of 1909 Act's provisions continue to apply to copyrighted works created before 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication and extended the renewal term from 14 years to 28 years, for a maximum of 56 years.

Performing rights are the right to perform music in public. It is part of copyright law and demands payment to the music's composer/lyricist and publisher. Performances are considered "public" if they take place in a public place and the audience is outside of a normal circle of friends and family, including concerts nightclubs, restaurants etc. Public performance also includes broadcast and cable television, radio, and any other transmitted performance of a live song.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988</span> United Kingdom law

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, also known as the CDPA, is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that received royal assent on 15 November 1988. It reformulates almost completely the statutory basis of copyright law in the United Kingdom, which had, until then, been governed by the Copyright Act 1956 (c. 74). It also creates an unregistered design right, and contains a number of modifications to the law of the United Kingdom on Registered Designs and patents.

The Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 was a bill introduced June 8, 2006 in the 109th United States Congress by Howard Berman (California-D) and Lamar Smith (Texas-R) as part of. It is one of several recent attempts to modify Section 115 of the United States Copyright Act to accommodate digital delivery of musical works.

The sound recording copyright symbol or phonogram symbol, , is the copyright symbol used to provide notice of copyright in a sound recording (phonogram) embodied in a phonorecord. It was first introduced in the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations. The United States added it to its copyright law as part of its adherence to the Geneva Phonograms Convention in 17 U.S.C. § 402, the codification of the Copyright Act of 1976.

SoundExchange is an American non-profit collective rights management organization founded in 2003. It is the sole organization designated by the U.S. Congress to collect and distribute digital performance royalties for sound recordings. It pays featured and non-featured artists and master rights owners for the non-interactive use of sound recordings under the statutory licenses set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 112 and 17 U.S.C. § 114.

The Internet Radio Equality Act (IREA), originally introduced as H.R. 2060, is proposed legislation by Rep Jay Inslee (D) WA to nullify the May 1, 2007, determination of the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) modifying the current webcast radio royalties and fees retroactively to January 1, 2006. The previous system charged radio stations a per performance rate of $0.000768, and it was that same rate from 1998-2005. The new system, effective May 1, 2007, increased that per-performance rate to the following levels: 2006=$0.0008, 2007=$0.0011, 2008=$0.0014, 2009=$0.0018, and 2010=$0.0019. This bill was introduced on April 26, 2007 by Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-IL) and has been cosponsored by over 100 members of the Congress. It was introduced in the Senate as S. 1353 on May 10 by Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). The bill's proponents claim that "the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent" when the Copyright Royalty Board's decision takes effect unless the bill passes.

Under the law of the United Kingdom, a copyright is an intangible property right subsisting in certain qualifying subject matter. Copyright law is governed by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended from time to time. As a result of increasing legal integration and harmonisation throughout the European Union a complete picture of the law can only be acquired through recourse to EU jurisprudence, although this is likely to change by the expiration of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, the UK has left the EU on 31 January 2020. On 12 September 2018, the European Parliament approved new copyright rules to help secure the rights of writers and musicians.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998</span>

The Fairness in Music Licensing Act increased the number of bars and restaurants that were exempted from needing a public performance license to play music or television during business hours. The bill was companion legislation passed along with the Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998.

Future of Music Coalition (FMC) is a U.S. 501(c)(3) national non-profit organization specializing in education, research and advocacy for musicians with a focus on issues at the intersection of music technology, policy and law.

The copyright law of South Africa governs copyright, the right to control the use and distribution of artistic and creative works, in the Republic of South Africa. It is embodied in the Copyright Act, 1978 and its various amendment acts, and administered by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission in the Department of Trade and Industry. As of March 2019 a major amendment to the law in the Copyright Amendment Bill has been approved by the South African Parliament and is awaiting signature by the President.

Twentieth Century Music Corp v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151 (1975), was an important decision of the United States Supreme Court, out of the Third Circuit, that questioned whether the reception of a copyrighted song on a radio broadcast constitutes a copyright violation if the copyright owner has only licensed the broadcaster to "perform the composition publicly for profit".

The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act was submitted as a direct response to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy; intending to reverse it.

The Copyright Alliance is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)(4) organization representing artistic creators across a broad range of copyright disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music Modernization Act</span> United States copyright law

The Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act, or Music Modernization Act or MMA is United States legislation signed into law on October 11, 2018 aimed to modernize copyright-related issues for music and audio recordings due to new forms of technology such as digital streaming. It is a consolidation of three separate bills introduced during the 115th United States Congress.

References

  1. 1 2 Sanner, Ann (2010-03-02). "Warwick Wants Performers Paid for Radio Play". ABC News. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
  2. Peters, Marybeth (1995-06-28). "Statement of Marybeth Peters The Register of Copyrights before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property Committee on the Judiciary" . Retrieved 2010-03-11.
  3. Christman, Ed (2010-02-02). "Artist Push Performance Rights Act During Grammy Week". Billboard. Archived from the original on 2013-01-15. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
  4. Bush, Debbie (2010-02-11). "Taking A Stand: Protecting local radio stations". 14WFIE. Retrieved 2010-03-11.
  5. "5 Reasons Why the Performance Rights Act is a Bad Idea | creative deconstruction". Archived from the original on 2010-03-05. Retrieved 2010-02-24. 5 Reasons Why the Performance Rights Act is a Bad Idea