They’re at it again. A few weeks ago, it was the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that pulled out of thin air a ruling that Section 301 didn’t really say what it plainly said, despite no authority to the contrary. Now, it’s the U.S. Department of Justice’s turn. They have informed songwriter representatives that from now on, each performing rights organization will have the obligation to license 100% of musical compositions rights, even though that PRO did not own 100% of the rights. Or 50%. Or 5%. How did the DOJ come to this conclusion? They made it up. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle J.D., examines the ins and outs of musical performance licensing and goes into the actual current consent decree and finds out that not only is 100% licensing not in the consent decree, the decree says the opposite of what the DOJ says it states.

One of the bedrock principles of the current Copyright Act was that it did not apply in any way to sound recordings made before February 15, 1972. But now, in a horrific decision, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the notice and takedown provisions of the Copyright Act do apply to pre-1972 sounds recordings, disregarding the clear directives of the Copyright Act and the clear opinion of the Copyright Office. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., analyzes the serious logical flaws in the Court’s ruling and highlights the dangers of what happens when a Court puts its opinion of “good policy” ahead of the “plain meaning” of a statute.

On May 30, 2016, a District Court in California dropped a bombshell. It ruled that the act of re-mastering a sound recording created a new sound recording copyright. This paves the way for a host of unintended consequences, including the elimination of termination rights and the possibility that sound recordings could in effect receive “perpetual” copyright. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle J.D., analyzes the decision from legal, musical and practical standpoints, and finds that when the Court decided that “everything old is new again” a host of problems was created.

On May 12, 2016, a Federal Court in Florida refused to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Google’s various statements about its search results, including that “[i]t is Google’s policy not to censor search results,” are false, deceptive and misleading. The chief complaint is that Google, contrary to its public pronouncements, made all of the Plaintiff company’s’ websites disappear from all possible Google search results. Since Google controls 70% of the U.S. search market and 90% of the European search market, this is equivalent to making the websites virtually disappear from the internet. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., takes a look at the allegations and the Court’s decision and finds it’s mostly a case of Google stating “we don’t do this…except when we do.”

May 2nd and 3rd of 2016 saw the U.S. Copyright Office holding live “roundtable” discussions in New York City about the continuing problems associated with the “notice and takedown” system of section 512 of the Copyright Act. If you were a heavy hitter, either on the copyright side (like Disney) or the tech side (like Verizon), this was your chance to have your voice heard by the Copyright Office. Nova Southeastern University's Copyright Officer, Stephen Carlisle, J.D., was not only present for the roundtables, but was an invited participant on two panels, and presents a frontline recap of what went down.