[Editor Charlie sez:  MTP’s first post of 2016 is a guest post by Stephen Carlisle, an entertainment lawyer with over 25 years experience in private practice in the State of Florida.  The post first appeared on the Nova Southeastern University Office of Copyright site where Mr. Carlisle is the university’s first Copyright Officer.  Posted with permission of the author.]

Originally posted on December 18, 2015 [before David Lowery’s class action against Spotify]

Two months ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article reporting that Spotify had failed to pay a significant amount of royalties due to the music publishing company associated with Victory Records. 1 Rather than make nice with Victory Records’ publishing arm, Spotify responded by pulling Victory’s catalog off the music streaming service. 2

This was immediately followed by several articles by David Lowery, (a songwriter for the indie bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven)…