The most remarkable aspect of the pending legislation in Congress that would force a sale of TikTok is how much money and how many high profile lobbyists have taken the CCP’s shilling (or maybe yuan) to push the obviously corrupt company’s water. And yet…the legislation is advancing by leaps and bounds and TikTok is failing.
David was interviewed by Billboard to give a perspective. The headline here is that TikTok appears to be doing the same thing that Spotify was doing when Spotify was sued by Melissa Ferrick and David–using songs without a license.
The music industry’s view of the proceedings in Washington is mixed. The perspective of artists and songwriters is arguably best expressed by David Lowery, the artist rights activist and frontman for the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, who also was one of more than 200 creators that, in early April, signed an open letter to tech platforms urging them to stop using AI “to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.”
“The rates TikTok pays artists are extremely low, and it has a history — at least with me — of using my catalog with no licenses,” Lowery says. “I just checked to make sure and there are plenty of songs that I wrote on TikTok, and I have no idea how they have a license for those songs.”
As a result, Lowery says that while “I’m kind of neutral as to whether TikTok needs to be sold to a U.S. owner, the bill pleases me in a general way because I feel that they’ve gotten away with abusing artists for so long that they deserve it. I realize the bill doesn’t punish them for doing that,” he continues, “but that’s why a lot of musicians feel they really deserve it.”
#Beyonce amongst other Artists are being accused of stealing publishings on songs they didn’t write. I believe every single word #TiffanyRed said.
When #Kelis was saying this very same thing about Beyonce stealing her samples for ENERGY on Renaissance, she was attacked on… pic.twitter.com/ncZS24S37M
By Chris Castle (A version of this post appeared on MusicTechPolicy and on Hypebot)
It’s unfortunately an old story, but that doesn’t make it right.
One of the most underpaid creatives in our business are songwriters who “just” write songs. “Just” is an odd word to use but it’s a common way to refer to those who give artists a voice because it really does all start with the song. And as Tiffany Red says in her video, the system is simply unjust.
“The system” is what has always been called “stealing publishing”. This is when an artist or a producer (and it happens with producers but for different reasons) threatens songwriters who created a song the artist may record with not covering that song unless the artist gets a chunk of the publishing. The amount can range all over the place, but often is at least 25% of the copyright. So not only are they not entitled to song’s earnings as a financial interest, they are definitely not entitled to the copyright because they created nothing.
On top of it, songwriters often have to eat many costs in order to get the song written, demoed and pitched. (I can’t tell you the number of times the songwriter demo essentially becomes the arrangement of the final recording, so “demo” is relative.). There’s a bunch of opportunities along the way for people to write themselves into the song when all they did was a job that they were probably being paid to do anyway. I have even encountered producers whose managers demanded a piece of publishing for the producer to even listen to an artist’s demos.
On the producer side, some producers want a piece of all publishing on the record and if they actually write they want their contributor share as a writer ON TOP of the publishing they are already stealing. Why? What possesses anyone to think they are entitled to do this? And “entitled” is exactly the right word.
One reason they steal publishing is because the producer royalty is unlikely to even recoup the producer advance in a streaming reality unless the track is a huge hit. (Remember that a producer gets a percentage of what the artist gets, say 30%ish, and the artist gets somewhere around 50% of the fraction of a penny per stream.) This is especially true of producers who enjoyed a lifestyle in the pre-streaming era and are trying to keep it going. It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it right.
And remember, the songwriter isn’t getting an advance. On top of the insult of stealing publishing, the artist has no intention of paying for it because the songwriter should consider themselves lucky to get the cover–which often is a career making record for the artist opening up income streams the songwriter never participates in.
When faced with these overreaching demands, songwriters have to make some hard choices. Occasionally I get to tell the artist’s team to fuck off. More often though–as Tiffany says–songwriters acquiesce.
Let’s face it—this is insulting. If I sat down and explained to my decent Greek working class parents that this is how songwriters get paid, they’d be shocked. If you went to your bank manager and explained how songwriters get paid, they’d be shocked. Doctors, lawyers, everyone who has some understanding of the economics of the world or what drives an industry and what creates value for an industry would be shocked by how songwriters are paid.
But nobody can bring the frustration home like a songwriter on the receiving end of this injustice. Watch Tiffany’s video. Take 15 minutes out of your life and watch it from beginning to end with no distractions. She’s absolutely correct that until the artists stop, until they let their team know that stealing publishing is not acceptable and if they do it they are not only not helping the artist, but they’ll be fired–then it will start to change.
She’s right about something else, too. A songwriter shouldn’t need a gatekeeper to protect them in a situation that should not be happening in the first place. There’s a line that we all learn from parents, teachers, coaches, mentors, the line between acceptable and unacceptable treatment of other humans, right and wrong if you like although that’s a bit simplistic. Stealing publishing is wrong, stealing publishing is on the wrong side of that line. This is what I think whenever I have to deal with the situation–how do you sleep at night?
The track, heart on my sleeve, credited to the ‘artist’ ghostwriter, has racked up more than 230,000 plays on YouTube, and more than 625,000 plays on Spotify.
In addition to AI-replicated vocals of Drake, the track – a seemingly original composition – also features AI-replicated vocals of The Weeknd’s voice.
Both Drake and The Weeknd release their (real life) records via UMG and its Republic Records.
Said UMG in a statement to MBW in the wake of today’s news: “UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already.
“With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
We are excited announce that Chris Castle will be moderating a panel on the future of the Copyright Royalty Board for songwriters (the “Phonorecords” proceedings) as part of the University of Texas School of Law Continuing Legal Education Artist Rights series.
The panelists are Mitch Glazier, RIAA, Clark Miller, Clark Miller Consulting, and Abby North of North Music Group.
The panel will be assessing both voluntary and statutory changes to make the Phonorecords process more representative and efficient and reprises the topic that David and Chris spoke on for the “Smartest People in the Room” series.
Readers will recall that the Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc. aka the MLC, is sitting on a pile of other peoples money (remember that the Mechanical Licensing Collective is the digital music services’ one-of-a-kind joint venture quango mandated by the good folks from Washington who are here to help). We estimate that the MLC has got at least $500 million socked away at City National Bank in Nashville collecting dust–or interest. More on that later. This would include current black box accruing since January 1, 2021 plus $424 million or so in historical black box that was voluntarily paid to the MLC by the DSPs in February 2021–an inexplicably large sum given all the DSP audits over the years.
And the clock is ticking, tick tock, tick tock.
Readers will also recall that the U.S. Copyright Office is responsible for the operations of the MLC, or as they say in Washington where all the children are above average and no one is responsible for anything, “has oversight” which usually means “gets to blame somebody else” when the fan takes over. And of course the Congress has oversight of the Copyright Office. Every so often, the head of the Copyright Office gets the rare joy of attending an oversight hearing at the Congress which happened recently and resulted in certain follow up “questions for the record” that get answered in writing.
The MLC and its employees should get one thing straight–they are about to be blamed for some grubby practices when Congress wants you to show them the money. And you will be thrown under the bus, count on it. Just think–you could have stolen the money the old fashioned way. In the dark. But no, you wanted the government to force songwriters to deal with you and you could not stop congratulating yourselves about how smart you were. Well, you wanted it, and now you’ve gotten it.
Senator Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, submitted some rather pointed questions about the MLC black box which drew a rather pointed response:
Question: The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC), the organization created under the Music Modernization Act to collect mechanical royalties for songwriters and publishers, also has an obligation to identify the owners of musical works that have accrued royalties when the owners are not known. The major publishers who largely control the MLC keep the royalties from unidentified works if the owners cannot be found. Over the past year, the MLC has identified only a tiny fraction of the rightful owners. [You were warned.] The major publishers stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars from that failure to find rightful owners. We did not intend to create a disincentive for the MLC and major publishers to find the rightful owners of music works.
What can the Copyright Office do to help ensure that the MLC is working to make sure that rightful owners of music works are identified and paid?
Response: The Mechanical Licensing Collective (“MLC”) should make every reasonable effort to ensure that royalties are paid to the rightful owners of musical works. According to the MLC’s first annual report, it has distributed over $420 million under the new blanket license for uses reported in 2021, with a steadily improving match rate reported to be approximately 88% of all royalties. With respect to the historical, pre-2021, unmatched royalties, which were reported to be about $426 million, the annual report says that the MLC recently started distributing those that it has been able to match. It also says that the MLC has begun making associated usage data for historical unmatched royalties available to copyright owners, which will facilitate further claiming and matching. Notably, the MLC plans to wait to process historical unmatched royalties from the Phonorecords III rate period until the Copyright Royalty Judges finalize those rates in the ongoing remand proceeding and digital music providers provide adjusted reports of usage and royalty payments. It is the Office’s understanding that the bulk of historical unmatched royalties come from that period. [More on this PR III issue below]
The Copyright Office has been active on the issue of matching musical works to accurately pay copyright owners. Last year, we issued a report recommending best practices for the MLC to consider to reduce the incidence of unclaimed royalties. The report’s comprehensive recommendations ranged from high-level concepts to detailed suggestions across seven areas: (1) education and outreach; (2) usability of the MLC’s systems, including the public musical works database and claiming portal; (3) data quality; (4) matching practices; (5) holding and distributing unclaimed accrued royalties; (6) measuring success; and (7) transparency. One of the report’s most significant recommendations was that the MLC should hold unclaimed royalties for longer than the statutory minimum period, to maximize its matching efforts and the ability of copyright owners to make claims before any market-share-based distributions are made. We recommended that the MLC should wait to make such distributions of unclaimed royalties based on the evaluation of various objective criteria, like match rates and engagement metrics.
Additionally, the Office and the MLC are each involved in substantial education and outreach efforts to help ensure that publishers and songwriters, especially self-published songwriters, are aware of the Music Modernization Act (“MMA”), understand their rights under the new system, know that they can register their works with the MLC and claim royalties, and know that royalties for unclaimed works will be equitably distributed to known copyright owners.
[Here comes the bus.]. The Office is continuing to engage with the MLC and other industry stakeholders, including digital services and songwriters, to monitor the MLC’s progress as it continues to ramp up operations. While the MLC has not indicated that it plans to make a distribution of unclaimed royalties anytime soon, the Office possesses broad regulatory authority to act if necessary to prevent a premature distribution. The statute requires the MLC to give ninety days’ notice before any distribution. We have previously cautioned that making a premature distribution of unclaimed royalties could jeopardize the continuation of the MLC’s designation. 84 Fed. Reg. 32,274, 32,283 (July 8, 2019) (“[I]f the designated entity were to make unreasonable distributions of unclaimed royalties, that could be grounds for concern and may call into question whether the entity has the ‘administrative and technological capabilities to perform the required functions of the [MLC].’”) (quoting 17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)(A)(iii)).
One issue that is not discussed in the QFR or anywhere else for that matter is what is happening to the hundreds of millions that the MLC is sitting on. Remember that the MLC is required to pay a government interest rate on black box, and that interest rate has been steadily increasing this year thanks to the Federal Reserve. That interest payment is presumably covered under the MLC’s administrative assessment and government fees charged to music users for the privilege of using the compulsory blanket license.
But wait–there’s more. According to the MLC’s annual report (at p. 4), the MLC invests the black box according to its internal “Investment Policy” established by its board of directors.
Investment Policy: This policy covers the investment of royalty and assessmentfunds, respectively, and sets forth The MLC’s goals and objectives in establishing policies to implement The MLC’s investment strategy. The anti-comingling policy required by 17 U.S.C. § 115(d)(3)(D)(ix)(I)(cc) is contained in The MLC’s Investment Policy. The Investment Policy was approved by the Board in January 2021.
This raises some interesting points. First and foremost, it is unclear where any trading profits reside. Realize that every CMO is confronted with the decision about what to do with the royalty float and black box, but not every CMO decides to invest these funds in the market. If they do invest the funds, it is generally the case that any trading profits, dividends or interest goes to offset the CMO’s administrative costs that otherwise would be deducted from collected royalties.
However, the MLC’s administrative costs are paid by the users of the blanket license (making the United States, I believe, the only country in history or the world that charges for the use of a statutory license). Therefore, the return on the MLC’s investment of the songwriters’ money would not be used for the same purpose as all the world’s CMOs that follow a similar practice.
Whether the ROI is returned to songwriters or to the users or retained by the MLC is unclear to me from the MLC’s annual report. It is also unclear as to the authority that the MLC’s board (or the Copyright Office for that matter) would have to put the songwriters’ money at risk in the market, what record keeping is made or required of the investments and ROI, or really much of anything at all, aside from the quoted statement above.
It is also unclear how, if at all, the MLC distinguishes between ROI on royalty or the administrative assessment. It would make sense for trading profits on received but unspent administrative assessment funds to offset current or future assessments, but it’s not clear if that is done.
Assuming there are any. Profits, that is.
I was hoping that this topic would be addressed in the oversight hearing, but maybe next time.
Look at Spotify’s “Global Top 50” playlist on any day and the world’s biggest music service will show all or nearly all English language songs. With few exceptions these songs are performed by Anglo-American artists released by major record companies.
These “enterprise” playlists largely take the place of broadcast radio for many users where Spotify operates and Spotify competes with local radio for advertising revenue on the free version of Spotify.
However, Spotify has not been subject to any local content protections that would be in place for local radio broadcasters. Enterprise playlists that exclude local music contributes to the destruction of music economies, including performers. Local performers struggle even more to compete with Anglo-American repertoire, even in their own countries.
Due to this phenomenon, local artists are forced to compete for “shelf space” with everyone in their local language and then the Anglo-American artists and their record companies. This also means that local artists compete for a diminishing share of the payable royalties. The “big pool” revenue share method of royalty compensation is designed to overcompensate the English-language big names and reduce payments to artists performing in other languages in their own country.
Local Content Rules
Many countries implement local content broadcast rules that require broadcasters to play a certain number of recordings performed by local artists or indigenous people, songs written by local songwriters in local languages, or recordings that are released by locally-owned record companies.
Because streaming playlists, especially Spotify enterprise playlists or algorithmically selected recordings, are an equivalent to broadcast radio, there is a question as to whether national governments should regulate streaming services operating in their countries to require local content rules. Implementing such rules could benefit local performers and songwriters in an otherwise unsustainable enviornment.
The Fallacy of Infinite Shelf Space
Because Spotify adds recordings at a rate of 60,000 tracks daily (now reports of 100,000 tracks daily) and never deletes recordings, there is a marked competitive difference between a record store and Spotify. In the record store model, artists had to compete with recordings that were in current release; in the Spotify model, artists have to compete will all recordings ever released.
Adding the dominant influence of Anglo-American recordings on Spotify, the “infinite shelf space” simply compounds the competitive problems for non-English recordings.
Streaming RemunerationHelps Solve the Sustainability Crisis
The streaming remuneration model requires streaming services—not record companies—to pay additional compensation to nonfeatured and featured performers. Streaming remuneration would be created under national law and is compensatory in nature, not monies in exchange for a license. Existing licenses (statutory or contractual) would not be affected and remuneration payments could not be offset by streamers against label payments or by labels against artist payments.
Each country would determine the amount to be paid to performers by streaming services and the payment periods. Payments would be made to local CMOs or the equivalent depending on the infrastructure in the particular country.
European Corporate Dominance
It must also be said that the two founders of Spotify hold a 10:1 voting control over the company through special stock issued only to them. This means that these two Caucasian Europeans control 100% of the dominant music streaming company in the world. For comparison, Google and Facebook have a similar model, while Apple has a 1 share 1 vote structure as does Amazon (although Jeff Bezos owns a controlling interest in Amazon).
The net effect is that the entire global streaming music industry is controlled by six Caucasian males of European descent. This demography also argues for local content rules to protect local performers from these influences that have produced an English-only Global Top 50 playlist.
Local governments could consider whether companies with the 10:1 voting stock (so-called “dual class” or “supervoting” shares) should be allowed to operate locally.
Countries Can Respond to Streaming’s Homogenized Algorithmic Playlist Culture
Many national cultural protection laws have a history of sustaining local culture and musicians in the face of the Anglo-American Top 40 juggernaut. There is no reason to think that these agencies are not up for the task of protecting their citizens in the face of algorithms and neuromarketing.
The American Association of Independent Music, the independent label trade association, filed comments with the Copyright Royalty Board opposing increasing the mechanical royalty to songwriters from the “frozen rates” to the 12¢ (plus cost of living adjustment) settlement rate of the participating record companies with the NMPA and NSAI. I wrote a reply to the A2IM comment that was timely filed with the CRB–barely. I will repost that comment in a few parts here on MTP. As I had about 10 minutes to write the comment due to the lateness of the A2IM filing, I will add some bracketed language to make it a bit less inside baseball.
Unfortunately, A2IM chose not to participate in the Phonorecords IV proceeding and came in a bit late to the party complaining of the check. Nobody stopped them from participating; it appears they put it all on red and it came up black. This is important because unlike independent songwriters who cannot afford the cost of participating at the CRB hearings, A2IM could have participated but chose not to.
As I told the Judges in my comment, I will focus on a few issues raised by A2IM regarding the CRB settlement process in general, the penny rate structure of the mechanical royalty system in the United States, and their proposal that mechanical licensing for physical configurations be handed over to the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
The Longer Table
I actually was pleased to join A2IM at their annual Indie Week conference recently in New York on a panel devoted to this very topic. I am well aware that they believe their members will be disproportionately affected by the increase in cost although I have not seen the data. After many years in the music business, I will take on faith for purposes of this letter that they are correct.
I completely concur that the negotiation process for CRB needs a relook if not an overhaul. I made the point on the A2IM panel that David Lowery and I intend to host a conference devoted largely to this subject [on November 15] at the University of Georgia at Athens. Dr. Lowery and I are both of a mind that this issue needs to be vetted by the Copyright Office in their roundtable format.
However, I do not concur that the Subpart B resolution should be derailed at the 11th hour because of these structural issues that lawmakers no doubt will need to resolve. The time for A2IM to have made their views known in Phonorecords IV has long passed. They had the opportunity to participate in the proceeding, which individual songwriters could not afford to do, and they did not. They had the opportunity to comment on the first and second comment periods for what became the rejected settlement and they did not. They had the opportunity to insert themselves in the second settlement and appear not to have done so until filing a comment on the last day at the 11thhour.
Derailing the settlement for this purpose at the 11th hour is inappropriate. Whether the Judges can even accomplish what is asked of them, I respectfully leave to Your Honors to decide, but I do think there’s a question of authority here. I do support including all these topics being on the table for Phonorecords V as do many other commenters.
What is the Actual Cost to Labels of the New Rates?
While I am prepared to take disproportionate impact on faith, I am less prepared to take disproportionate financial impact without more data. There is an assumption that A2IM labels all will have a one-to-one increase in costs because of the new rates, whatever they end up being. I’m not so sure about that and would want to know a few things including the following.
Many indie labels operate on a revenue share basis with their artists (or licensors). In those revenue share deals, the artist or licensor is paid a percentage of revenue that includes all mechanical royalties. In that structure, the new rates have arguably zero impact on the [independent] label.
Because of rate fixing dates in deals [with controlled compositions clauses] where the label does pay the mechanicals, the new rates would only apply to records delivered during the rate period, i.e., after January 1, 2023. Term recording artist agreements would typically include a controlled compositions clause as the Judges have noted in the Withdrawal Notice. In such an arrangement, the label would be paying a modest increase and could easily tell the artist that unless the artist-songwriter agreed to take still lower rates based on the previously frozen rates, the label would be unable to release their records.
A2IM does make a good point about the bull-headedness of the DSPs on permanent download rates. Perhaps the Judges could refer this issue to the Register for subsequent referral to the Department of Justice Antitrust Division to investigate these pricing practices. Congress seems focused on these kinds of issues at the moment.
[It is unfair for A2IM to complain of being excluded from settlement negotiations by the labels who did participate in the proceedings and who did negotiate a settlement with the NMPA publishers who also participated in the proceedings. Participating in the proceedings is a threshold condition for participating in a settlement of the proceedings. It’s hardly the case that the major labels conspired against the indies this time. If A2IM labels were concerned about being included in these negotiations there are a number of steps they could have taken, starting with participating in the bifurcated Subpart B proceeding–a much less expensive proposition than the streaming side.
There is also a threshold question–that A2IM does not really address–as to whether the CRB has the authority to unilaterally change U.S. mechanical licensing structure that Congress initiated in 1909 and has been based on a penny rate ever since, not to mention hundreds of thousands of term recording artist agreements and licenses incorporating those statutory rates. The entire US recording industry is built on statutory rates and controlled compositions clauses, not to mention the valuations of music publishing catalogs.
That change requested by A2IM is a question of such “magnitude and consequence” that it should require Congress to act based on both the CRB’s statutory authority, the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent holding in West Virginia vs. EPA as well as common sense. Not to mention there are other reasons why getting a CRB case before the Supreme Court could backfire and disrupt a process that in other important ways is working quite well.]
A2IM, the independent label trade association, filed comments with the Copyright Royalty Board opposing increasing the mechanical royalty to songwriters from the “frozen rates” to the 12¢ (plus cost of living adjustment) settlement rate of the participating record companies with the NMPA and NSAI. I wrote a reply to the A2IM comment that was timely filed with the CRB–barely. I will repost that comment in a few parts here on MTP. As I had about 10 minutes to write the comment due to the lateness of the A2IM filing, I will add some bracketed language to make it a bit less inside baseball.
Unfortunately, A2IM did not participate in the Phonorecords IV proceeding and came in a bit late to the party complaining of the check. Nobody stopped them from participating; it appears they put it all on red and it came up black.
As I told the Judges, I will focus on a few issues raised by the American Association of Independent Music regarding the CRB settlement process in general, the penny rate structure of the mechanical royalty system in the United States, and their proposal that mechanical licensing for physical configurations be handed over to the Mechanical Licensing Collective.
The Clean Slate
A2IM raises the idea of compensating songwriters on a percentage of wholesale basis which is how mechanicals are paid in many if not most other countries. I understand why labels favor this structure but I also understand why publishers and songwriters do not.
First, I am of the view that a percentage of wholesale royalty is incompatible with a compulsory license. [To my knowledge, the European countries operating on a percentage of wholesale basis do not have a compulsory licensing regime.] Imposing a compulsory obligation to have a third party set the “just compensation” for rights the government takes from the songwriter has that unconstitutional ring to it [see 5th Amendment and Takings by Prof. Richard Epstein, an oldie but goodie].
And that really is the problem with a percentage of wholesale royalty—it allows the conflicted record company to call the tune [for songwriters] which is the very definition of moral hazard. Having said all that, I am happy to have a conversation about a clean slate and reimagining of the entire structure as long as it really is a clean slate. Of course, that will mean throwing away the entire controlled composition structure.
It must be said that in countries with a percentage of dealer price mechanical royalty there [are] no controlled composition terms at all. So if we are to have the discussion, let’s have all the discussion for all the record companies including catalog. If we want to be like Europe, let’s be European.
We cannot overlook that changing that compensation system will throw royalty compliance examinations of every record company onto the table with great force. How can songwriters be asked to give up a system that has been in place since 1909 without knowing whether they have gotten a straight count heretofore?
It must also be said that if A2IM members feel justified in changing the entire U.S. mechanical rate system, there is nothing stopping them from creating such terms in their new signings under controlled compositions clauses. In fact, such arrangements might be a good laboratory to experiment with these alternative structures.
And that’s saying a lot. Thanks to first-class investigative reporting by Kristin Robinson at Billboard, the story of what looks to be one of the biggest advertising fraud cases can be told. It involves a whole lot of people looking the other way starting with the boards of directors of Downtown Music (which owns AdRev) and YouTube (which doles out access to Content ID).
Trichordist readers will also recall the bad old days of brand sponsored piracy led by Google and Google’s ad serving deal with Megavideo according to the Megavideo indictment in an extradition proceeding that somehow…ahem…has been stalled offshore for ten years by a bottom less pit of legal fees paid for by someone in.a scene worthy of Hieronymus Bosch.
And who can forget Google’s $500,000,000 non prosecution agreement with the DOJ when the Obama Justice Department refused to actually indict Larry Page, Sergei Brin and Eric Schmidt for violating the Controlled Substances Act and even apologized to Google–despite the 4,000,000 documents and who knows how much in person testimony before a Rhode Island grand jury that directly implicated Larry Page and the massive shareholder lawsuit and settlement against Google for squandering the shareholders money keeping the C-suite’s butts out of prison. When questioned about the nonprosecution agreement by Senator John Cornyn before the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, Eric “Uncle Sugar” Schmidt refused to answer on the advice of counsel, often referred to as “taking the Fifth.”
L-R Google Brain Trust Chief Shill Pablo Chavez, Uncle Sugar, Head Lawyer David Drummond
But it is the first time that Downtown has been involved. I have the same question of both companies: Where was the board? The reason we have boards of directors is to protect the shareholders from exactly this kind of thing. In YouTube’s case, they have another layer of fiduciary duty–protecting the advertisers–both large and small–who trust them with billions of the advertisers’ money. Not to mention the children that the platform caters to.
Take the time to read Kristin Robinson’s outstanding journalism and then see if you can answer the question–where were the boards? I think the entire story hasn’t been told.
San Antonio musicians! Chris Castle (@musictechpolicy) joins Linda Bloss-Baum of @soundexchange and a great panel at @TPRCommunity to talk about artist rights–TODAY at Texas Public Radio, doors open at 6:30! Deets and materials here. Music Artist Forum https://t.co/8vssWTjAbU
Musicians of all ages are invited to a networking workshop and panelist discussion dedicated to understanding the future of music technology, copyright law, entertainment law, obtaining royalties, and navigation of music streaming services.
The Trichordist 
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