It’s about fucking time. Read Ben Sisario’s story at NY Times.
The lawsuit by Songwriters of North America contends that the Justice Department’s ruling on 100 percent licensing violates the property rights of songwriters, since it would mean that private contracts among songwriting collaborators — a common arrangement — might not comply with the new rule. In its announcement last month, the Justice Department suggested that writers with such agreements would need to renegotiate those deals. The songwriters’ lawsuit argues that this change violates the Fifth Amendment by removing property rights without due process and seeks a declaration that the new rule is unlawful. In addition to the Justice Department itself, the suit names as defendants Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Renata B. Hesse, who oversees the agency’s antitrust division.
“The 100 percent mandate,” the suit says, “is an illegitimate assertion of agency power in gross violation of plaintiffs’ due process rights, copyright interests and freedom of contacts, and needs to be set aside.”
By Steve Winogradsky and Chris Castle, all rights reserved.
The recent ruling by the U.S. Department of Justice in the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees sent everyone scratching their heads as to what do we do now? The authors provide a helpful chart for songwriters, motion picture and television producers and other music users to see how bad it really is.
David Lowery and Chris Castle discuss a very Googley week in artist rights as Google attacks the Copyright Office and Tom Wheeler, the Chairman of the FCC and employer of Public Knowledge co-founder Gigi Sohn (or is it the other way around?) brings a Google-style Trojan Horse attack on film and television producers plus above & below the line folks around the world.
With show notes with the d/l about who really captured whom.
(Don’t understand what this is all about? Start here. Then here. Then here)
Look I have plenty of half cephalopod friends with extremely radical views. (I also have plenty of non-cephalopod friends with radical views.) Some friends are on the far right, half cephalopod anarcho-capitalists while others are on the far left, staunch half cephalopod neo-marxists. I often enjoy sitting around with them and arguing politics and philosophy. You probably have similar experiences.
But like most Americans I’m a pretty moderate politically. Somewhere in the hazy middle with most Americans: socially liberal; fiscally conservative; opposed to overbearing regulation and in favor of fair and free markets. But like many Americans I’m unhappy when the system/markets seem rigged to benefit only the elites. Sometimes reasonable Americans get so frustrated they want to vote for a candidate from the extreme left or right to simply break the system. But mostly when they walk into the voting both Americans abandon that impulse and stay in the much maligned middle.
When Americans vote for a mainstream Republican or Democratic candidates they are generally communicating support for policies that lie in this middle ground. And as fun as it may be to argue hypotheticals with half cephalopod neo-marxists or anarcho-capitalists (we may even flirt with these ideas ourselves) we don’t really want folks on the fringes of the political spectrum having great influence in Washington DC. ESPECIALLY IF WE DIDN’T VOTE FOR THEM!
Thus comes the troubling news that FCC Chairman Wheeler may have come under the influence of individuals that are possibly half human half cephalopod neo-marxist aliens. No, we can’t prove that the staff of Public Knowledge and Free Press are half-human half-cephalopod neo-marxist aliens, but we can’t rule it out either. Let’s look at what we do know and what we don’t…
Senior Vice President of the Google funded Public Knowledge is Harold Feld. Harold Feld likes to think of himself as Che Guevara. That may or may not mean he is a Neo-marxist. However many of the policies that he and Public Knowledge advocate involve collectivizing the intellectual property rights of individuals and companies. The intellectual property would then belong to the state and the state would impose some sort of renumeration scheme for the former rights holders. This in and of itself does not indicate that he is half human and half cephalopod of extraterrestrial origin.
However, none of the photos of staffers at Public Knowledge show their lower body. Thus we can’t use these photos to rule out the possibility that many staff members at Public Knowledge including Feld are in fact half human half cephalopod hybrids.
Founder of Free Press Robert W. McChesney doesn’t bother to hide the fact he is some sort of Marxist. This of course does not imply the “sort of marxist” he is, is in fact half cephalopod. Remember even if a significant percentage of neo-marxists are half cephalopod, there may be some marxists who aren’t half cephalopod.
Nanu Nanu is Tom Wheeler there?
Gigi Sohn is Senior Counsel to the Chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler. She was also a co-founder of Public Knowledge. Even though the policies and funding sources for Public Knowledge and Free press are very similar (Google/Soros) we can’t say with any certainty that Gigi Sohn is a half human half cephalopod neo-marxist. She does however have a very large phone that looks capable of making extraterrestrial calls to planets that may harbor intelligent cephalopod lifeforms.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler praised both Public Knowledge and Free Press for “representing the people.” While it’s tempting to associate the use of the phrase “the people” with Marxist things like “The People’s Republic of China” or “The People’s Patriotic Firing Squad for Counterrevolutionary Authors” I don’t think he intended it in a marxist way. Countering that is the fact Wheeler thinks that Public Knowledge and Free Press represent the people rather than arch capitalists. This indicates Wheeler is living on another planet. And some people think that half-human half cephalopod neo-marxists can only be of extraterrestrial origin.
From these photos we can’t rule out the possibility that the lower half of these Public Knowledge staffers are cephalopod.
While it may be tempting to get sidetracked measuring the freakish non-gaussian variation in cranial widths of various staffers at the Google funded Public Knowledge, it’s important to note that the real reason they are standing in front of books is not so that we can easily measure their craniums, but because they are saying: “Hey we’re not Google shills!”
You don’t have to be Roland Barthes to figure out what they are up to. Even if two of the books on the shelves behind you appear to be Idiot guides, books still lend a sort of scholarly vibe to your headshot. And of course scholarly implies neutrality, and neutrality says :”Just because I’m funded by Google I’m not a shill for Google.”
Even with cranial width variations that exceed 4 standard deviations, still neutral!
Now I suppose that I need to prove that I can use Microsoft Word tables as well as Public Knowledge in their recent “scholarly” study that was NOT a dishonest personal attack on the Register of Copyrights written by half human half cephalopod staff.
So here is a table that demonstrates the alignment of Public Knowledge policy positions with Google
Wait I don’t understand what is happening here? Cephalopods? Cranial width?
“Public Knowledge? Most of the money and all the policy is Google” – Former board member.
The Google/Soros front group that is Public Knowledge just released an unprecedented attack on the Copyright Office and staff. This is notable for several reasons.
First, the attack is in retaliation for the Copyright Office opposing the FCC and DOJ Antitrust on two recent proposed rule changes that favor Google. I’m mean they don’t even hide it. See screenshot above. They are going hog wild. BTW we should note, the CO does not oppose set top box competition, they oppose all the little copyright goodies for Google stuffed into the proposed regulation. But PK and FCC are dishonestly portraying it very differently. These people are real <Poll Results>.
Did Gigi Sohn phone home to Public Knowledge/Google and ask them to attack the copyright office?
Second Gigi Sohn Senior Counsel to FCC Chairman Wheeler and the driving force behind “Unlock the box for Google” is also founder of Public Knowledge. So think about it. It appears that a high ranking federal official has used her own foundation to publicly attack other federal officials in a disgusting and underhanded manner. Is this even legal? What <Poll Results>! Regardless, it’s FOIA time!
Third Public Knowledge seems to be trying to set the stage for a putsch at the Copyright Office now that they have a new Google/Soros endorsed and funded Librarian of Congress coming in. The Copyright Office is marginally a part of the Library of Congress. Carla Hayden the new Librarian was (is?) a board member at the Soros OSI.
Fourth, Public Knowledge won’t be invited to the Copyright Office holiday party this year. You may thinkn I’m being funny but this is significant. Would you invite these <Poll Results> to your holiday party? If the Public Knowledge/Google/Soros orchestrated putsch at the Copyright Office fails we can expect future Public Knowledge reports to go directly into the shredder at the Copyright Office. So either these folks are extremely confident in their ability to remake the copyright in their image or they have completely lost any ability to shape future Copyright policy.
Clarinet playing William Patry senior counsel for copyright at Google and former Copyright Office employee was left off of Public Knowledge’s “Revolving door” list. It contradicted their false narrative so they seem to have let that *ahem* slide.
Fifth, The Public Knowledge report seema to engage in some extreme cherry picking of data to create the impression that the Copyright Office is “captured” by the “copyright industry.” The “white hot smoking gun” as Disney fan boy and spam science fiction writer Cory Doctorow describes it is the “fact” that 7 copyright office employees over the past 22 years have gone on to work in the “copyright industries!” That’s almost one employee every 3 years! Scandalous!!! Compare that to the Obama administration’s 200+ employee revolving door with Google. Apparently the scandal is that the Copyright Office are just not doing a very good job of cashing in! Try harder folks. But seriously back to the cherry picking. The folks at Public Knowledge omit many many former Copyright Office employees that went on to work at companies that don’t like copyright very much. The most glaring omission is Willam Patry who is now Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. A quick search of the Public Knowledge website reveals the organization is well aware of Patry.
New playground game for the kids “Where in the world is William Patry?”
Perhaps that’s a tad bit hyperbolic. I mean it’s probably unfair to compare Google to meth-heads and low grade strippers. Clearly Google and its DC proxies are much more dishonest and dangerous!
Let’s do a quick round up of all the Obama Administration lame duck favors being called in by Google. And remember this is just copyright and it’s still just the pre-lame duck session. The election hasn’t even happened. It’s gonna be insane after the election. Taxpayers will be lucky if there’s any office furniture left in federal offices by the time inauguration day rolls around.
The DOJ Antitrust Division 100% Licensing Rule For Songwriters
Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse is also former lawyer for Google.
We have covered this extensively. Read the links at the end of this section if you need to catch up. But this is a rule that only makes sense if you understand that it benefits Google/YouTube in the purported $1,000,000,000 dispute with Pharrell. The rule in every other respect makes no sense. The rule itself reduces competition; it will entrench dominant market players on both sides (licensee and licensor); it reduces licensing efficiency; it violates the constitutional rights of songwriters; it violates the DOJ ATR Division own rules; flies in the face of the previous 75 years of antitrust regulation of songwriter organizations; and it benefits a single company. Fucked up.
The rule was apparently pushed through by former Google attorney Renata Hesse who is now an Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division. This is particularly rich because when Renata Hesse worked for Google she argued and lobbied against the antitrust regulation of the search advertising monopoly. The fox is in the henhouse. And this fox has just overseen one of the most regressive pro-monopoly applications of antitrust law against individuals (chickens) since the 1890s when the antitrust laws were routinely used against labor unions and in favor of the trusts (foxes) they were supposed to limit.
But here is how you really know that the rule is corruption at work. The DOJ ATR very carefully phrased the 100% licensing rule as a “clarification” of the original consent decree rules. In other words it isn’t a new rule.
Why is this important?
Because it is a transparent attempt to get around the constitution, which explicitly forbids ex post facto law. That is, “A law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law.” Essentially Renata Hesse loads the entire US antitrust enforcement apparatus into a time machine and goes back to 1941 and “clarifies” the existing rule. Thus making those legal agreements between songwriters, co-writers and performing rights societies illegal before they were signed!
Presto-changeo no ex post facto.
Hey, that makes a great album title. Or title of a memoir. Preferably one written from a federal prison.
Complexity is theft and the sure sign of a scam. No honest person does something this complicated to fix a simple problem. Surely we are all being scammed here.
So how is this not an unconstitutional “taking” from songwriters that solely benefits Ms Hesse’s former client Google? This takes any co-administration agreements that Pharrell may have with cowriters and makes them illegal. Further the new rule forces his co-writers who are members of ASCAP and BMI (already under DOJ consent decrees) to license his song without his consent. It thus deprives thousands of songwriters like Pharrell of the valuable right to cut their own deal with Google/YouTube.
Maybe in a few years when songwriters begin to notice that their ASCAP and BMI checks are reduced by the extra administrative deductions required by the 100% licensing rule, remember this: a single apparently corrupt (didn’t recuse, ethics violations) government employee Renata Hesse took money out of your pocket. I’m looking forward to some clever songwriter with a clever lawyer finding a way to hold her personally responsible for the loss of income to all songwriters. This is not as unlikely as you think because federal officials that violate constitutional rights of individuals are not always immune from personal liability.
Let’s see what happens when the FOIAs start rolling in.
Google, the FCC and the So-called “Unlock the Box”
Hahahahahahahhahahahahahaahahahahahahhahahaha… phew…. good one Mr President!… about set top boxes … consumer choice, that’s rich”
Honestly this is mostly above my pay grade, but I know enough to say the Google shadow government in Washington DC is doing something that is bad for copyright owners while helping Google cash in.
“Unlock the set top box.” That sounds good. Right? How could this be bad? Well, it is definitely being pushed by Google and their well funded proxy Public Knowledge. And it’s also THE classic Google ploy: Take a position that seemingly has some small benefit to the public or consumers (functional cable boxes you can purchase not rent) and then load up the regulation like a trojan horse with all kinds of goodies for Google.
In this case all you need to know is this: the “unlock the box” rule requires the FCC to institute some sort of panel or process to “oversee and adjudicate copyright licensing issues.” I’m not an expert but I don’t understand how congress has given the FCC any right to regulate private copyright licensing agreements? Did congress act? No. So once again this sounds more like some sort of extralegal compulsory licensing scheme that would benefit Google and once again give the monopoly access to content they have not licensed.
Indeed as Precursor blog notes the copyright office weighed in on the proposal:
“The Copyright Office is therefore hopeful that the FCC will refine its approach as necessary to avoid conflicts with copyright law and authors interests under that law. As a threshold matter, it seems critical that any revised proposal respect the authority of creators to manage the exploitation of their copyrighted works through private licensing arrangements, because regulatory actions that undermine such arrangements would be inconsistent with the rights granted under the Copyright Act, and to some degree, as discussed below, the authority of Congress to decide whether and when limitations on these rights should apply.”
Doesn’t this seem like the same playbook that Google used over at the DOJ Antitrust Division? A novel and likely unconstitutional reinterpretation of the rules to get what they want? This is Google running wild as the clock runs out on the Obama administration.
Why do I say that? This proposal by all accounts is being pushed by Gigi Sohn who is senior counsel to the Chairman of the FCC Tom Wheeler. Gigi Sohn of course was the founder of Public Knowledge. And Public Knowledge is funded by Google. In the Oracle v Google case the Judge forced Google to produce a Shill list. Guess who was on it? Public Knowledge. Does Gigi Sohn play the same role at the FCC that Renata Hesse plays at DOJ ATR? Looks like it.
Just look how fucking cozy FCC chairman Wheeler is with Public Knowledge. It makes you wonder if the FCC and Public Knowledge for all practical purposes have merged. Here’s what Wheeler said at the most recent Public Knowledge awards dinner:
“I’m a little surprised that Public Knowledge would actually ask me to come here today since I stole Gigi Sohn,” Wheeler said as the keynote speaker at a Public Knowledge awards dinner in September.
“We cannot have debate, we cannot have the essence of how [James] Madison said this government would work without organizations like Public Knowledge,” he continued. “There is plenty of ambition on the other side of issues. There is plenty of ability to speak out. Plenty of voices, which many times are presented as ‘independent,’ but aren’t. But the ability of Public Knowledge, Free Press, Common Cause — that ability keeps the process on the straight and narrow. So I’m here to salute you for the job you do in making sure that ambition is countered with other ambition representing people.”
Either Wheeler is totally in the tank for Google or he is an idiot who doesn’t realize that Google funds and calls the shots at Public Knowledge. There is no “independent” public voice that is represented here. Free press ain’t the public either. It’s just Google’s BFF Soros. See Soros hack.
I wonder which large technology company Wheeler works for after his term?
(Also Madison is rolling in his fucking grave: “[government] interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions, every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects of the preceding.” Have you ever read Madison you dumbass?)
FCC/Google/Public Knowledge Attack on the Copyright Office
Did the FCC’s Gigi Sohn phone home to Public Knowledge/Google and ask them to attack the Copyright Office? Sure looks like it. (AP photo Harry Hamburg).
But none of the preceding compares to this. This is where it gets nasty. There is no way around this but it really looks like Gigi Sohn a government official that happens to be chief counselor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has enlisted Public Knowledge, an organization she founded, to personally attack the Register of Copyrights. Simply because the Copyright Office did its job and weighed in on the FCC proposed unlock the box rule.
Notice that these dishonest astroturfers don’t mention that the Register of Copyrights also worked for The Guggenheim. That would be inconvenient because often the Guggenheim is on the exception side of Copyright law. No, that wouldn’t fit their shitty little narrative.
Guess what else didn’t fit their shitty little narrative? William Patry chief copyright counsel for Google once worked at the Copyright Office. In a section of the report titled “Copyright Office to Industry” they list 7 people in 22 years that went from the copyright office to “the copyright industry.” This is supposed to show some sort of revolving door between the Copyright office and such high paying jobs like working in public policy office for the financially decimated photography industry. (That is not a payday if you don’t get the joke.)
Yet these folks they leave William Patry off the list…
How the fuck do you omit that? This is pure dishonesty. Further, are we really supposed to believe that Gigi Sohn and others at the FCC are not somehow in on this dishonest attack by Public Knowledge? C’mon. You know this is all FOIA-able?
This made me so mad I decided to look up “piece of shit” at Urban Dictionary. I’ve heard the phrase before and I wanted to see if perhaps it applied in this situation.
What do you think? If you go out of your way to cherry pick data to make the Register of Copyright and the Copyright Office look corrupt are you a person or organization that is in the business of not sucking?
If you are a high ranking governement official, say, like Gigi Sohn who is senior counsel to the Chairman of the FCC and you just maybe get the organization you founded to mount a dishonest personal attack on another federal official are you “working correctly?”
If you are the FCC chief and you have people working for you that seem to be working in coordination with Google proxies and you don’t fire them are you “working correctly?” Public Knowledge doesn’t even bother to disguise the reason for their attack. They are doing this right under the chairman’s nose. How does Wheeler not know?
Regardless it look like these <href? Poll Results:>Pieces of shit are running wild up there in Washington DC. And everything these <href? Poll Results:>Pieces of shit do seems to benefit Google. Add to that the financial relationship between these <href? Poll Results:>Pieces of shit Public Knowledge and Gigi Sohn? How is this not Google not giving a shit and running hog wild in the last days of the Obama Administration?
Karoline Kramer-Gould reflects on her experience of leaving her long career in radio after standing up to the powerful lobby of the National Association of Broadcasters, the NAB’s fear campaign directed at radio station employees and rediscovering a life in music after the dirty politics of broadcasting.
I get dozens of these a month. They are almost all deficient. In effect they purport to being legal “notices of intent” to license a composition, but they are not. And the services know this. They send them out anyway.
They appear fraudulent in two ways:
Some are sent (knowingly) after the work is used thus the service does not qualify for a compulsory license. This is fraud because the unsophisticated songwriter will be fooled into thinking that they no longer have the valuable right to negotiate a direct license from the services. This is just as fraudulent as tricking pensioners into waiving rights to pension underpayments with an official looking letter.
The remainder are simply backdated. In other words they purport to be a legitimate and timely NOI from say 2012 or 2014. They are not. How do I know? If they had my address back then, why haven’t I received my monthly accountings as required under the law? Why are they sending them only now? It looks like these are simply being manufactured.
Further virtually all of the services are engaged in this fraud. I have deficient NOIs from virtually all of the digital services. They appear to all be participating in this fraudulent activity. How do you suppose that happened? Just a coincidence?
Meanwhile the DOJ Antitrust Division Litigation Section III which has authority over the entertainment business has spent two years investigating the settled practice of “fractional licensing” by songwriters and found (lo and behold!) the previous 75 years of DOJ antitrust lawyers were wrong, and “fractional licensing” is anticompetitive. These guys are smarter than the last 75 years of DOJ lawyers combined! Now songwriters and PRO are burdened with the task of unwinding hundreds of thousands of co-writing agreements and new administrative burdens to account to co-writers.
Not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but you should know the end of fractional licensing benefits one company: Google/YouTube. See here. And the fractional licensing investigation was led by a former Google lawyer Renata Hesse. It’s like the 18 fucking 90s when it comes to antitrust enforcement in Washington DC, a period when antitrust laws were used by trusts to protect against competition.
So it’s virtual torches and pitchfork time. Over the next couple weeks I will demonstrate how to use the new DOJ licensing rules against the services to bring the entire digital licensing system down. It’s really easy and it follows the DOJ orders to the letters of the law. What have we got to lose?
P.S. When I do get a check from these services they look like this. No accounting now statement no nothing? Is this a bait check? Like you cash it and then it’s an “implicit license?”
The Trichordist 
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