The Music Industry
Posted: August 16th, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Various | No Comments »Almost got away with it:
“She (Margaret Cone)’d been tipped off that an amendment to a pending bill — quietly inserted without debate — would reclassify under the nation’s copyright laws all sound recordings, like cassettes and CDs, as ‘work made for hire.’
“If true, that slight change would mean musicians would never again be able to own their recordings. Instead, record companies would become the sole legal owners of a record over its legally copyrightable life, currently 95 years.”
~snip~
“Then, ‘on a fluke,’ she went to the buried “definitions” section of that second bill and there she found this:
“‘(e) WORK MADE FOR HIRE-Section 101 of title 17, United State Code is amended in the definition relating to work for hire in paragraph (2) by inserting “as a sound recording.’”
~snip`
“Last November, acting at the RIAA’s request, Mitch Glazier, then chief counsel for Congress’ copyright subcommittee, inserted the “sound recording” amendment to an unrelated bill. (The bill in question, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, had been green-lighted for safe passage through Congress.) The change effectively made all new commercial cassettes and CDs — from Britney Spears to Slipknot, from Eminem to Andrea Bocelli — a new category qualifying as work for hire.”
Four Little Words, by Eric Boehlert, Salon, August 28, 2000 (via)
A blast from the past, but a cautionary tale for anyone how holds or plans to hold a copyright on their own work and would like to hold their own with the industry.
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