New York — A copyright management company called Music Copyright Solutions (MCS), last week initiated a legal proceeding against Microsoft, Yahoo and Real Networks, alleging that each of their online music stores — Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody — infringed upon their copyrights for more than 45,000 pieces of compositions and the authors of music they look after.
Well, if you are nodding your head and wondering how that is possible, with all the royalties they pay out, then you are not alone.
MCS Music America Inc., a division of British company Conexion Media Group PLC, last week filed a case in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee. MCS comprises of a large number of other plaintiffs in the case, which is based on streaming technology used by Microsoft, Yahoo and Real Networks.
In fact, this copyright business is a real mess. In the case of this latest lawsuit, the plaintiff, in addition to a number of songwriters including Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad fame, claims that all three companies may have licensed the copyrights on the recordings, but did not license the copyright on the compositions.
The filing alleges zune.com, yahoomusic.com, and rhapsody.com, claiming that these services each allow people to listen to the entire sound recording of a musical work using “on demand streams,” and also allow people during a free trial period or on payment of a monthly fee the ability to download an unlimited number of sound recordings of music.
Certainly, these companies paid somebody for the rights to offer these songs. But there is a catch, which TechDirt described as: these companies may have licensed the rights to the recordings, but that does not suggest that they licensed the rights to the compositions (also known as publishing rights). As section 23 of the legal filing puts it:
In order to transmit, perform, reproduce and deliver any sound recording of any musical work via “On-Demand Streams” or “Limited Downloads,” Defendants must first obtain not only the rights for the sound recording itself, but also the rights for the underlying musical composition that is embodied on said musical recording.
In fact, there are much more details out regarding such case explaining the legalities and issues at hand, but it is assumed these music services struck deals with record labels, but somehow the plaintiffs and labels are separate entities and the rights are separate.
The lawsuit names a number of albums that it claims to be the sole legal or beneficial owner. Those include “Oh to be kept by Jesus”. It also administers the following titles: “Ain’t gonna be their fool no more”; “Borderline” and many many other titles listed in the lawsuit.
MCS is demanding $150,000 for each act of infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works, costs, and an injunction preventing future infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.
For websites and companies seeking to transmit or allow the playing of music on their sites, it is far more complicated than that and the stakes are incredibly higher. In fact the copyright laws as related to music are so complicated that even places we consider to be legitimate sources are being slapped with lawsuits alleging infringements.