Category: Black Box

Who Will Get to the Bottom of The Hundreds of Millions of Black Box Money at MLC?

By Chris Castle

One of the most common questions we get from songwriters about the MLC concerns the gigantic level of “unmatched funds” that have been sitting in the MLC’s accounts since February 2021.  Are they really just waiting until The MLC, Inc. gets redesignated and then distributes hundreds of millions on a market share basis like the lobbyists drafted into the MMA?  

Not My Monkey

Nobody can believe that the MLC can’t manage to pay out several hundred million dollars of streaming mechanical royalties for over three years so far.  (Resulting in the MLC holding $804,555,579 in stocks as of the end of 2022 on its tax return, Part X, line 11.) The proverbial monkey with a dart board could have paid more songwriters in three years.  Face it—doesn’t it just sound illegal?  In my experience, when something sounds or feels illegal, it probably is.

What’s lacking here is a champion to extract the songwriters’ money.  Clearly the largely unelected smart people in charge could have done something about it by now if they wanted to, but they haven’t.  It’s looking more and more like nobody cares or at least nobody wants to do anything about it.  There is profit in delay.

Or maybe nobody is taking responsibility because there’s nobody to complain to.  Or is there? What if such a champion exists?  What if there were no more waiting?  What if there were someone who could bring the real heat to the situation?

Let’s explore one potentially overlooked angle—a federal agency called the Office of the Inspector General.  Who can bring in the OIG?  Who has jurisdiction?  I think someone does and this is the primary reason why the MLC is different from HFA.

Does The Inspector General Have MLC Jurisdiction?

Who has jurisdiction over the MLC (aside from its severely conflicted board of directors which is not setting the world on fire to pump the hundreds of millions of black box money back into the songwriter economy).  The Music Modernization Act says that the mechanical licensing collective operates at the pleasure of the Congress under the oversight of the U.S. Copyright Office and the OIG has oversight of the Copyright Office through its oversight of the Library of Congress.

But, hold on, you say.  The MLC, Inc. is a private company and the government typically does not have direct oversight over the operations of a private company.

The key concept there is “operates” and that’s the difference between the statutory concept of a mechanical licensing collective and the actual operational collective which is a real company with real employees and real board members.  Kind of like shadows on the wall of a cave for you Plato fans.  Or the magic 8 ball.

The MLC, Inc. is all caught up with the government.  It exists because the government allows it to, it collects money under the government’s blanket mechanical license, its operating costs are set by the government, and its board members are “inferior officers” of the United States.   Even though The MLC, Inc. is technically a private organization, it is at best a quasi-governmental organization, almost like the Tennessee Valley Authority or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  So it seems to me that The MLC, Inc. is a stand-in for the federal government.

But The MLC, Inc. is not the federal government.  When Congress passed the MMA and it charged the Copyright Office with oversight of the MLC.  Unfortunately, Congress does not appear to have appropriated funds for the additional oversight work it imposed on the Office.  

Neither did Congress empower the Office to charge the customary reasonable fees to cover the oversight work Congress mandated.  The Copyright Office has an entire fee schedule for its many services, but not MLC oversight.  

Even though the MLC’s operating costs are controlled by the Copyright Royalty Board and paid by the users of the blanket license through an assessment, this assessment money does not cover the transaction cost of having the Copyright Office fulfill an oversight role.

An oversight role may be ill suited to the historical role of the Copyright Office, a pre-New Deal agency with no direct enforcement powers—and no culture of cracking heads about wasteful spending like sending a contingent to Grammy Week.

In fact, there’s an argument that The MLC, Inc. should write a check to the taxpayer to offset the additional costs of MLC oversight.  If that hasn’t happened in five years, it’s probably not going to happen.  

Where Does the Inspector General Fit In?

Fortunately, the Copyright Office has a deep bench to draw on at the Office of the Inspector General for the Library of Congress, currently Dr. Glenda B. Arrington.  That kind of necessary detailed oversight is provided through the OIG’s subpoena power, mutual aid relationships with law enforcement partners as well as its own law enforcement powers as an independent agency of the Department of Homeland Security.  Obviously, all of these functions are desirable but none of them are a cultural fit in the Copyright Office or are a realistic resource allocation.

The OIG is better suited to overseeing waste, fraud and abuse at the MLC given that the traditional role of the Copyright Office does not involve confronting the executives of quasi-governmental organizations like the MLC about their operations, nor does it involve parsing through voluminous accounting statements, tracing financial transactions, demanding answers that the MLC does not want to give, and perhaps even making referrals to the Department of Justice to open investigations into potential malfeasance.  

Or demanding that the MLC set a payment schedule to pry loose the damn black box money.

One of the key roles of the OIG is to conduct audits.  A baseline audit of the MLC, its closely held investment policy and open market trading in hundreds of millions in black box funds might be a good place to start.  

It must be said that the first task of the OIG might be to determine whether Congress ever authorized MLC to “invest” the black box funds in the first place.  Congress is usually very specific about authorizing an agency to “invest” other people’s money, particularly when the people doing the investing are also tasked with finding the proper owners and returning that money to them, with interest. 

None of that customary specificity is present with the MLC.

For example, MLC CEO Kris Ahrens told Congress that the simple requirement that the MLC pay interest on “unmatched” funds in its possession (commonly called “black box”) was the basis on which the MLC was investing hundreds of millions in the open market.  This because he assumed the MLC would have to earn enough from trading securities or other investment income to cover their payment obligations.  That obligation is mostly to cover the federal short term interest rate that the MLC is required to pay on black box.

The Ghost of Grammy Week

The MLC has taken the requirement that the MLC pay interest on black box and bootstrapped that mandate to justify investment of the black box in the open market.  That is quite a bootstrap.

An equally plausible explanation would be that the requirement to pay interest on black box is that the interest is a reasonable cost of the collective to be covered by the administrative assessment.  The plain meaning of the statute reflects the intent of the drafters—the interest payment is a penalty to be paid by the MLC for failing to find the owners of the money in the first place, not an excuse to create a relatively secret $800 million hedge fund for the MLC.  

I say relatively secret because The MLC, Inc. has been given the opportunity to inform Congress of how much money they made or lost in the black box quasi-hedge fund, who bears the risk of loss and who profits from trading.  They have not answered these questions.  Perhaps they could answer them to the OIG getting to the bottom of the coverup.

We do not really know the extent of the MLC’s black box holdings, but it presumably would include the hundreds of millions invested under its stewardship in the $1.9 billion Payton Limited Maturity Fund SI (PYLSX). Based on public SEC filings brought to my attention, The MLC, Inc.’s investment in this fund is sufficient to require disclosure by PYLSX as a “Control Person” that owns 25% or more of PYLSX’s $1.9 billion net asset value. PYLSX is required to disclose the MLC as a Control Person in its fundraising materials to the Securities and Exchange Commission (Form N-1A Registration Statement filed February 28, 2023).  This might be a good place to start.

Otherwise, the MLC’s investment policy makes no sense.  The interest payment is a penalty, and the black box is not a profit center.

But you don’t even have to rely on The MLC, Inc.’s quasi governmental status in order for OIG to exert jurisdiction over the MLC.  It is also good to remember that the Presidential Signing Statement for the Music Modernization Act specifically addresses the role of the MLC’s board of directors as “inferior officers” of the United States:

Because the directors [likely both voting and nonvoting] are inferior officers under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, the Librarian [of Congress] must approve each subsequent selection of a new director. I expect that the Register of Copyrights will work with the collective, once it has been designated, to ensure that the Librarian retains the ultimate authority, as required by the Constitution, to appoint and remove all directors.

The term “inferior officers” refers to those individuals who occupy positions that wield significant authority, but whose work is directed and supervised at some level by others who were appointed by presidential nomination with the advice and consent of the Senate. Therefore, the OIG could likely review the actions of the MLC’s board (voting and nonvoting members) as they would any other inferior offices of the United States in the normal course of the OIG’s activities.

Next Steps for OIG Investigation

How would the OIG at the Library of Congress actually get involved?  In theory, no additional legislation is necessary and in fact the public might be able to use the OIG whistleblower hotline to persuade the IG to get involved without any other inputs.  The process goes something like this:

  1. Receipt of Allegations: The first step in the OIG investigation process is the receipt of allegations. Allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, and other irregularities concerning LOC  programs and operations like the MLC are received from hotline complaints or other communications. 
  2. Preliminary Review: Once an allegation is received, it undergoes a preliminary review to determine if OIG investigative attention is warranted. This involves determining whether the allegation is credible and reasonably detailed (such as providing a copy of the MLC Congressional testimony including Questions for the Record). If the Office is actually bringing the OIG into the matter, this step would likely be collapsed into investigative action.
  3. Investigative Activity: If the preliminary review warrants further investigation, the OIG conducts the investigation through a variety of activities. These include record reviews and document analysis, witness and subject interviews, IG and grand jury subpoenas, search warrants, special techniques such as consensual monitoring and undercover operations, and coordination with other law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, as appropriate.  That monitoring might include detailed investigation into the $500,000,000 or more in black box funds, much of which is traded on open market transactions like PYLSX.
  4. Investigative Outputs: Upon completing an investigation, reports and other documents may be written for use by the public, senior decision makers and other stakeholders, including U.S. Attorneys and Copyright Office management. Results of OIG’s administrative investigations, such as employee and program integrity cases, are transmitted to officials for appropriate action. 
  5. Monitoring of Results: The OIG monitors the results of those investigations conducted based on OIG referrals to ensure allegations are sufficiently addressed.

So it seems that the Office of the Inspector General is well suited to assisting the Copyright Office by investigating how the MLC is complying with its statutory financial obligations.  In particular, the OIG is ideally positioned to investigate how the MLC is handling the black box and its open market investments that it so far has refused to disclose to Members of Congress at a Congressional hearing as well as in answers to Questions for the Record from Chairman Issa.

This post previously appeared on MusicTech.Solutions

by Trichordist

Dave Rowntree is Suing the UK Performing Rights Society Over Misallocation of Unmatched Royalties (Black Box)

According to press reports, Dave Rowntree of Blur filed the UK equivalent of a class action lawsuit against PRS (the UK version of ASCAP and BMI). The claim is a “collective proceeding” filed with the UK’s antitrust tribunal. The class action established a website to communicate about the claim with interested parties. The website says:

Collective Proceedings Against PRS for Music

If You Were a Writer Member of the Performing Right Society at Any Time Since 9 March 2017,
a Proposed Legal Claim Could Affect Your Rights

On 27 February 2024, the claim was brought against PRS that asks the Competition Appeal Tribunal for permission to go forward as an “opt-out collective action.”  The claim concerns the way in which PRS distributes, or permits to be distributed, certain royalty sums that are called in the PRS Rules and Regulations (“PRS Rules and Regulations”) and the PRS Distribution Policy Guide terms such as  “unmatchable” (including “copyright control”), “non-distributable”, and “unclaimed” and colloquially referred to within the music industry as “Black Box” royalties. The majority of Black Box royalties are royalties belonging to PRS writer members but when the Black Box royalties are distributed, the distribution is heavily skewed in favour of publishers who receive a large portion of the writer share. In other words, Black Box royalties are transferred from PRS writer members and given to PRS publisher members who have no right to those royalties.

David Rowntree seeks to represent the class of PRS writer members who have lost money arising from the proposed claim.

Of course, the Mechanical Licensing Collective is sitting on hundreds of millions of black box money for the US as well, and may end up being the defendant in a separate class action at some point in the future.

by thetrichordist

When Will the MLC Disclose How they Invest the Black Box Money?

[this post originally appeared in MusicTech.Solutions as “Unrealized Losses and the Black Box Investment Policy” by Chris Castle. We asked him to update it a bit to repost.]

Well, another quarter is rolling around and the MLC is still sitting on 100s of millions of dollars of songwriter money as far as I can tell. Billboard says the MLC has “matched”–maybe different than “paid”–$200 million of the $427 million in black box that it was paid by the services in 2021. This doesn’t count the unmatched that the MLC has itself added to that sum. And Congress still haven’t required them to disclose their investment policy, returns on investment or much of anything else.

Compare the MLC to community banks. There are approximately 1,000 community banks with net assets between $250,00,000 to $500,000,000. There are approximately another 1,200 community banks with net assets between $100,000,000 to $250,000,000. It’s admittedly rough justice, but why should one entity holding hundreds of millions of other peoples’ money have virtually no disclosure requirements and be essentially unregulated while another is the opposite?

Remember that the MLC is supposed to pay interest “at the Federal, short-term rate” “for the benefit of copyright owners entitled to payment of such accrued royalties.” Note that the Federal short-term rate is today a lot higher than it was when the lobbyists wrote the Music Modernization Act, currently 4.21% or thereabouts. And through the power of compound interest, that’s a bunch of cash the MLC is supposed to come up with. I wonder where they’ll get it from. Wouldn’t you like to know?

Anyway, let’s talk about interest rates. The “risk free rate” is often thought of as the rate of interest paid on US government bonds. That interest rate is thought of as risk free because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States that you hear so much about these days. Want to know where you can find that full faith and credit? Look in the mirror. 

When you ask around about what collective management organizations do with their “black box” monies while they are waiting to match money with songwriters or at least copyright owners, you often hear that the money is invested in very safe instruments, like U.S. treasury bonds. This might be particularly true of CMOs that are required to pay interest on black box because that interest has to come from somewhere.

But–and here it is–but, as we have learned from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse and the number of federal government officials in the mumble tank about why these banks are failing and why they are getting bailed out by, you know, the full faith and credit of the United States, “risk free” seems to be a relative concept. When you buy US government bonds, there are a number of different maturity dates available to you, kind of like buying a certificate of deposit. A common maturity date is the 10-year bond and the two-year bond, both of which were recently down sharply.

But–there is a connection between the interest rate that the bond pays, the price of the bond, and the maturity date of that bond. When bond interest rates increase, the face price tends to decrease. So if you paid $100 for a bond with a interest rate of say .08% and that rate then increased to say 4.5%, the face price of that bond will no longer be $100, it will be less. If that increase happens fairly quickly, you can have difficulty finding a buyer. The good news is that when the Federal Reserve raises the interest rate, there is about as much news coverage of the event as it is theoretically possible to have, both before during and after the rate increase, not to mention the Federal Reserve chair testifying to Congress. It’s very public. Closely watched doesn’t really capture that level of attention.

When bond prices decline, holders only “realize” the loss or gain if they sell the bond unless the bond is marked to market so the firm has to disclose the amount of what the loss would be if they sold the bond. Hence the concept of “unrealized losses,” “maturity risk,” or “interest rate risk.”  Some think that US banks currently have $620 billion in unrealized losses due to interest rate risk. And don’t forget, these are your betters. These are the smart people. These are the city fellers.

This interest rate risk issue is not limited to banks, however. It is also present anytime that an entity tasked with caring for other people’s money invests that money in treasury bonds, crypto, or whatever. Like the MLC. You don’t have to be Wall Street Bets to end up losing your shirt or something in this environment.

So the point is that the same problem of interest rate risk and unrealized losses could apply to CMOs, such as The MLC, Inc. because of their undisclosed “investment policy” of investing the $424 million of black box they were paid by the services. They don’t disclose what the investment policy is and they don’t disclose their holdings so we don’t really know what has happened, if anything. The money could be perfectly safe.

Or not.

by Trichordist

Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers To the Right: When Will the MLC Show Us the Money?

If you’ve received one of these emails from the MLC about having to recast their monthly statement inside of a single month, when you’re eying that $500,000,000 of supposedly unmatched money that’s sitting in the MLC, Inc.’s bank account (maybe?), or if you’re trying to figure out when they are launching the vastly overdue claiming portal, you’re probably wondering–who’s in the clown car today? Bozo or Pennywise?

But maybe they’re smarter than they look. Because all they have to do to distribute that $500,000,000 on a market share basis is keep you looking at the bright and shiny object while they run out the clock.

And if you’re waiting for the Copyright Office to save you because they have “oversight”, you’re going to be waiting for a long time. Here’s the reality–nobody is minding the store. There’s a difference between “oversight” and “overwatch.” In Washington, “oversight” means finding someone else to blame and from the very beginning it has been clear who the MLC intends to blame–you. Because you didn’t “play your part” or sufficiently “connect to collect”.

The Copyright Office has done a couple things while under the supervision of the current head lobbyist for Spotify. They’re good at studies, terrible at oversight, so let’s give credit where it’s due. But also realize that’s where it stops because they have about as much moxie as a starfish. (And if you think the NMPA is going to save you, take a look at the frozen mechanicals debacle and ask yourself if a rational person could really take that seriously.)

At the core of the MLC’s business model is the ability to match. Matching is kind of a “See Spot run” building block. If you can’t match, it’s very close to saying you can’t count. Because it depends on what the definition of “match” is.

So what is a match? Or as the Bard might say, how can I screw thee? Let me count the ways. The Copyright Office produced the Unclaimed Royalties Best Practices study partly on this very topic. Notice the difference between “best practices” and “rules.” “Best practices” is not the same as “rule”. If you violate a best practice, nothing happens to you, so therefore perfect for Washington. If you violate a rule, bad things happen to you. The connective tissue is enforcement. If you violate a rule at the Securities and Exchange Commission, you wear stripes. If you violate a rule at the Environmental Protection Agency, you will pay a fine, for sure. If you violate a rule at the MLC? There really aren’t any so it can’t happen. In other words, it’s just like the Harry Fox Agency.

But that’s what we have so let’s look at one passage in particular from the Best Practice Study because that’s the closest we have to a rule book.

The Office recommends that the MLC make all [matching] metrics publicly available, except to the extent it would cause confidential or business sensitive information to be improperly disclosed. [God forbid.] Specifically regarding match rates, the Office acknowledges the MLC’s point that “vendors can easily increase their claimed ‘match percentage’ by simply dropping the confidence level at which they call something a match.” For that reason, the Office recommends that the MLC provide appropriate context for its metrics, including information surrounding how it defines a match, relevant confidence levels, and how confidence levels are tuned. Additionally, so that they are clear and precise, and to avoid possible confusion, the Office recommends that all royalty figures be provided both with and without accrued interest. [How about a best practice of how they are practicing complying with best practices best?

The Office recommends that in addition to providing annual statistics in its annual report, the MLC also have a dedicated public webpage displaying all of these metrics in a clear, well-organized, user-friendly, and accessible manner. The webpage should be interactive and allow users to search, sort, and break down the data so it may be more easily reviewed and analyzed. The webpage should also have an export or download feature, including bulk exporting/downloading, to aid public consumption and dissemination. The Office recommends that the webpage be updated monthly after each batch of new reports of usage arrive and go through initial matching processes. All metrics should be retained and made available online indefinitely (though the MLC could distinguish between current and historic metrics in the future) so long-term trends can be assessed and to ensure the public and the Office have access to them in connection with the review of the MLC’s designation every five years. The MLC should also be very clear about how applicable metrics may change in response to DMP reporting adjustments and the reconciliation of any related royalty underpayments or overpayments permitted by the Office’s regulations. Relatedly, the Office also recommends that the MLC make publicly available relevant metrics about DMP reported usage that the MLC determines is not subject to blanket licenses (e.g., where it is subject to a voluntary license instead, public domain musical works, etc.), such that any related paid royalties have been credited or refunded back to the DMP.

What would also be nice is to tell you how much of your money they are holding and how you get it back. Maybe they could practice the best out of that.

There’s nothing particularly insightful about any of that, right? It’s the kind of thing that any songwriter giving the subject a moment or two of thought could have figured out at any point in the last 100 years. It’s also the kind of thing that you would have expected to have been built into the MLC’s system–which is essentially the HFA system–from the beginning.

It doesn’t matter what they say they aspire to do. Naturally they have to say they aspire to get it 100% correct–because otherwise that raises some interesting questions about intent, right?

Will they ever be called to account for their failures? Doubtful. The only business in the world where you can get the government to let you hold $500,000,000 of other people’s money and then keep it because paying it out was just too hard for you.

Do you think this mess is what Congress had in mind after they were fed a bunch of crap by the know-nothing lobbyists?

So let’s ask again–Bozo or Pennywise?

by Trichordist Editor

Songwriters and Publishers Ask the MLC: Where’s my money?–MusicTechPolicy

By Chris Castle

If anyone connected to The Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc. quango brings up the $424,000,000 black box payment that the MLC received in February as part of services claiming their safe harbor under the Music Modernization Act Title I giveaway, it’s usually in the context of claiming credit for the payment as in “Aren’t we great, we got the services to pay $424,000,000 of black box money owed to songwriters.” (Followed shortly by so where’s my bonus?)

Notice what’s not mentioned in that sentence? True, some services paid some money to the MLC which was required by Title I in order for the major infringers like Spotify to enjoy yet another safe harbor. But the payment was not made to songwriters or publishers–it was made to the MLC quango, which is where it sits today, seven months later. 

How could this be, you say? Very simple. Nobody made sure that the MLC was in a position to pay the money out before they took the money in. This is the kind of thing that you would make sure is tied down in the two-plus years the MLC was operational before they got the money. You know, like when did Noah build the Ark?  Before the rain.

This is the kind of thing you might expect to be mentioned in the MLC’s annual report which was due June 30 but seems to have been delayed. What should have happened, of course, is that the Copyright Office in its supposed oversight role for the MLC quango should be closely reviewing MLC’s progress with paying out a half billion of other people’s money. This is what you would expect from a bit-in-the mouth hard-driving approach to oversight of hundreds of millions that Congress tasked to the Copyright Office. 

Ask yourself (or maybe the Library of Congress Inspector General) whether you think that a pre-New Deal federal agency that has never had enforcement powers is culturally suited to the kind of rigorous prosecution that the oversight role requires? Having created the MLC self-licking ice cream cone, does anyone seriously think that the Copyright Office will rock the boat, particularly when the lawyers seem very interested in landing a job at Spotify (regulated by the Copyright Office) or the National Association of Broadcasters both of which have an ontologically hostile relationship with songwriters? Do you think anyone at the MLC is looking over their shoulder because they’re afraid of the Copyright Office? And if they don’t fear the oversight, what incentive do they have? Nobody else will be twisting their arms.

So should it come as a surprise to anyone that people are asking “where’s my money?” Or that no one is answering?

by Trichordist Editor

Guest Post: Honesty In Our Favor: HFA Loses Attempt To Exit Eight Mile Style Case–What Implications For MLC?

Guest post by Chris Castle

The Uniform Commercial Code defines “good faith” as “honesty in fact and the observance of reasonable commercial standards of fair dealing.”

Spotify was sued by Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated, two publishers that control rights in some of the early Eminem repertoire, including Lose Yourself. Remember that earlier this year, Spotify announced with great fanfare that Lose Yourself was streamed over 1 billion times on the platform. That’s just one measurement of Eminem’s dominance on Spotify. Turns out that Spotify had failed to license a good chunk of Eminem’s catalog.

The publishers eventually joined the Harry Fox Agency to the lawsuit as participating in the situation, adding claims of vicarious and contributory copyright infringement against the long-time publishing administrator to the industry. In fact, the Harry Fox Agency gave some people the impression that when it came to Section 115 of the Copyright Act, HFA thought they were the government. What ever is this venerable organization doing getting sued for copyright infringement instead of leading the charge against the infringer?

At one point a few years ago, quite a few years ago now, HFA decided to jump up on top of the wall. They started working for tech companies like Spotify and also administering publishing rights. That’s right–both sides. What could possibly go wrong?

Let me illustrate with an anecdote (one that does not involve HFA, or MRI for that matter). A highly ethical licensing administrator interviewed for a job handling music licensing for a big tech company. After several rounds of interviews, the administrator was told they weren’t getting the job. Asking for a reason, the tech company told the administrator that the company thought the administrator were likely going to flag and at least try to fix any problems they found in the tech company’s reporting. The administrator didn’t find this remarkable as this was the honest thing to do. The company said, we don’t want honesty when it’s not in our favor. The company hired someone else because they did not want “honesty in fact”.

There are serious allegations against the Harry Fox Agency in the Eight Mile Case. Remember, this is a defense motion to dismiss, so the plaintiff largely gets the benefit of the doubt in their favor. You may ask yourself what possible motivation could Spotify have for engaging in such risky behavior. In her order denying in part and granting in part HFA’s motion to dismiss, Judge Trauger puts her finger right on the most plausible explanation:

[I]t is undisputed that [Eminem, aka Marshall] Mathers is an artist who has enjoyed extraordinary commercial success and has built a large, dedicated fanbase, such that his omission from a major streaming platform might discourage some meaningful number of potential users from subscribing. 

In other words, they did it for the subscribers, they did it for the growth and they did it for the money.

While Eight Mile alleged both vicarious and contributory infringement, Judge Trauger dismissed the claim for vicarious infringement on technical grounds (with leave to amend). Not so with the claim for contributory infringement, however:

HFA objects that it was under no obligation to police Spotify’s in-house decisions regarding infringement. Whether that is true or not, the plaintiffs have not merely alleged that HFA failed to affirmatively police Spotify’s conduct; they have alleged both that HFA knew and, through the ordinary fulfillment of its duties, should have known that the infringement was occurring and that HFA was helping to conceal it.…There is little doubt, moreover, that those allegations of knowledge were pleaded sufficiently. Even when a claim is governed by the heightened pleading requirements of Rule 9(b), “[m]alice, intent, knowledge, and other conditions of a person’s mind may be alleged generally.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). The Supreme Court, moreover, has recognized a party’s “aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement” as evidence of an improper purpose in the contributory infringement analysis. Grokster, 545 U.S. at 939. That circumstantial evidence is only heightened when the defendant, knowing of the capacity for infringement, fails to take steps to avoid it. See id. (citing Groskter’s lack of “attempt[s] to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity using their software”).

The plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that HFA became aware of Spotify’s licensing predicament and offered services that directly filled its need to maintain an illusion of lawfulness while continuing to infringe. 

If these allegations turn out to be proven true, songwriters (and the Copyright Office for that matter) may well ask themselves if there are implications for HFA’s continued role as a vendor for The MLC, if not why they were selected in the first place.

This post first appeared in MusicTechPolicy

by Trichordist Editor

Will the @CommonsDCMS Committee Ask How Apple and Spotify Got Away With Hundreds of Millions in Black Box for So Many Years?

One of the questions that immediately comes to mind with the announcement of the MLC’s $424 million black box payment is how did they get away with owing so much money to so many people for so long? Tough question to get an answer to for the average songwriter, but good news: The UK Parliament’s inqiury into the economics of streaming is meeting on February 23 and will have before it senior representatives of Amazon, Apple and Spotify! Great timing! These three companies alone account for $350,000,000 in black box, or 82% of the total.

MLC Payments

So not only can the Committee inquire into how long the companies got away with it and the justification for holding onto so much of other people’s money for so long, but the Committee could also inquire as to whether there are any UK songwriters included in the respective companies black box payments for exploitations in the US during the worst pandemic in living memory.

Remember, these services are required by law to obtain a license to exploit all these songs. This was always the deal and they knew going into business what was expected of them. The law requires them to find the songwriter or not use the song. It doesn’t require them to not find the songwriter but use the song anyway.

by Trichordist Editor

The MLC Announces the Inception to Date Black Box Payments: $424 million

According to an MLC press release, the MLC has $424,384,787 from digital music services:

The Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) announced today that it has received a total of $424,384,787 in accrued historical unmatched royalties from digital service providers (DSPs), together with corresponding data reports that identify the usage related to these royalties.  

A total of 20 DSPs separately transferred accrued historical unmatched royalties to The MLC as required in order for them to seek the MMA’s limitation on liability for past infringement. In addition to the accrued unmatched royalties transferred to The MLC, the DSPs concerned also delivered more than 1,800 data files, which contain in excess of 1.3 terabytes and nine billion lines of data. 

This is a lot of money, but you do have to ask if this is what they admit to, now much is really there? Time will tell. You also have to ask whether they would have paid the money at all if it weren’t for the lawsuit brought against Spotify and the Harry Fox Agency by Eminem publishers Eight Mile Style and Martin Affiliated. Once the services got it through their heads that moving the goalposts wasn’t going to get them off of the front pages of the class action lawyer magazines (with a map that said “X MARKS THE SPOT”), the money was forthcoming.

Here’s the list of services that the MLC says paid the headline number:

MLC Payments

Note that the top five payments are from Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Google and Pandora. It is simply laughable that of this group, the two biggest offenders are Apple and Spotify for different reasons. Apple tries to position itself as a friend to artists and songwriters and is the worst offender. Spotify has literally no excuse as they have been sued multiple times and as we now see for good reason. Amazon and Google are two of the biggest technology companies in commercial history, but they can’t find songwriters.

The moral of the story is that you can’t find what you don’t look for. And of course the one sided drafting of the Music Modernization Act basically gives the services a pass on whether this payment was even accurate. You have to think that if the accounting was so sloppy that these paragons of technology missed the target by 100s of millions, there very easily could be 100s of millions more that we’ll never get. Do not let anyone tell you that this is some great victory by the lobbyists–this is a great victory by the lobbyists for Big Tech. They are paying us with our own money through a pig in a poke. If our lobbyists are going to celebrate anything, they need to celebrate when every penny is accounted for and paid to the right person. And there should be no cost-benefit analysis because as we were told many times, the services are paying for it. So they should pay for all of it, including the distribution to the long tail. In other words, our lobbyists should celebrate only if the market share distribution is zero. Surely they thought of this.

But now the hot potato is at the MLC which is financed by all these same offenders. We need to ask if the money reported by the MLC is the exact sum that they received from the participating DSPs or if there were any “fees” that disappeared from view before it was reported. We also need to ask if the monies received by the MLC is the exact same dollars that were paid by the DSPs and whether any “fees” disappeared before the money got to the MLC.

But all in all, a potentially good day provided that money immediately begins flowing to songwriters. There’s a long way between here and there, but keeping pressure on will keep attention on that juicy target.

by thetrichordist

The DLC Finally Confirms (Sort Of) How Much is in the MMA Black Box–Bigger than a breadbox

By Chris Castle

[This post first appeared on MusicTechPolicy]

We’ve all heard rumors about how much is in the “inception to date” black box at the digital music services. The main reason that nobody knows is another example of the dismal drafting of the Music Modernization Act.

Limitation on Liability

Wouldn’t you think that if the class actions against Spotify gave the insiders the leverage to negotiate the MMA giveaway that they could at least have gotten an immediate accounting from the services for how much of the songwriters’ money they’ve been holding all these years? But no, it’s sleepy time in Washington yet again. From the Land of Frozen Mechanicals they bring you more Brinksmanship 101. The retroactive black box payment is due to be made by the services to the MLC and its data vendor, HFA–remembering that HFA was also the data vendor for at least some of the services that created the black box in the first place.

limitation on liability 2

However, there is some activity at the Copyright Office now about how to get this money paid. It’s at the Copyright Office because while drafting the aircraft carrier revision to the Copyright Act (aka Title I of the Music Modernization Act), the hard parts were never drafted and were left to the Copyright Office to handle through regulations. Musicians–you’ve seen this before. This is the Washington version of “we’ll fix it in the mix.” So you do have feel sympathy for the Copyright Office in the situation when all the smart people leave them twisting in the breeze.

Not that I necessarily believe this number, but for the first time the services have given a bigger than a breadbox idea of how much is in the black box. The DLC’s lawyers filed an “ex parte” letter in which they made that revelation (along with the known universe: Artist Rights Alliance Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Digital Licensee Coordinator Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Mechanical Licensing Collective Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Music Artists Coalition Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Nashville Songwriters Association International Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), National Music Publishers’ Association Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Recording Academy & Songwriters of North America Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020), Songwriters Guild of America et al. Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 18, 2020).)

The DLC itself is at the mercy of its members in terms of revealing this number but they claim the following in the Digital Licensee Coordinator Ex Parte Letter (Nov. 17, 2020):

DLC also provided a rough estimate of accrued royalties that are available to be transferred to the MLC, based on a limited survey of a subset of DLC members at a particular point in time, and with the crucial caveat that the precise amounts are in flux as digital music providers continue to engage in robust matching efforts. Specifically, DLC estimated that several hundred million dollars were available to be transferred to the MLC as accrued royalties, even after accounting for the derecognition of accruals based on preexisting agreements containing releases to claims for accrued royalties.

DLC also explained that the accruals that were derecognized because copyright owners were paid and provided releases were a fraction of that amount—on the order of tens of millions of dollars.

So now we know at least that much. We know there are “several hundred million” dollars at issue in the black box and we generally know where the money is. We may know that DLC members hold the money. We also know that this money has not been identified, but we at least know enough to get the nose of the camel in the tent.

by thetrichordist

Black Box Hunting: The Songwriters Guild/Society of Composers & Lyricists/Music Creators North America’s Ex Parte Letter Stands Up for Transparency

[Editor T says: Remember when songwriters were promised that the Music Modernization Act was going to solve all your problems—AND give you a set of steak knives? Remember? Never needs ironing? And doubles on sax? One big feature was digital music services paying up to the Mechanical Licensing Collective for matching the entire black box from “inception” meaning all the money a service ever held that their data vendors couldn’t match and weren’t paid to try very hard, especially Spotify aka “defendant”. Who was that data vendor who couldn’t match? HFA. And who is the MLC’s data vendor? HFA. So the last couple weeks the insiders have been back-tracking behind closed doors at the Copyright Office on how–or if–that black box will be paid to songwriters. The only way you’d ever know this was happening is if you were paying very close attention to the Copyright Office “ex parte” letters. (sign up for email alerts there.) The Songwriters Guild/SCL/MCNA group is the songwriter’s junkyard dog with their teeth sunk in the tuchus of the insiders. We’ll be posting a selection of these recent “ex parte” letters which publicly document private conferences held by the Copyright Office with “stakeholders”. “Everyone’s a winner, bargains galore….the large print giveth and the small print taketh away” as Tom Waits said.]

EX PARTE MEETING SUMMARY WITH

THE UNITED STATES COPYIGHT OFFICE

Docket Number 2020-12

November 18, 2020

Re: Summary of the November 13, 2020 Ex-Parte Meeting Between the United States Copyright Office on behalf of the following independent, US-based music creator organizations: the Songwriters Guild of America, Inc. (SGA), the Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL), and Music Creators North America, Inc. (MCNA)

On Friday, November 13, 2020, an ex-parte video-conference meeting was conducted by the United States Copyright Office (USCO) with multiple interested parties concerning rulemakings in connection with Doc. No. 2020-12. This summary is submitted on behalf of SGA, SCL and MCNA (together, the “Independent Music Creator Organizations” or “IMCOs”), all of which were represented at the meeting. Attending for SGA were President Rick Carnes, outside counsel Charles Sanders, and outside legislative consultant Marla Grossman of the American Continental Group (ACG). Attending for SCL was President Ashley Irwin. Attending for MCNA was President Eddie Schwartz. The meeting was chaired on behalf of the USCO delegation by its General Counsel, Regan Smith.

Individuals representing the IMCOs began by respectfully stressing, as they had in their ex parte tele-conference with the USCO on September 11, 2020, the bedrock principle that independent music creators speak for themselves on all issues related to their rights and interests, and that no other music community groups have the right or authority to claim otherwise. Specifically, the IMCOs rejected the assertion by some music publisher representatives (backed by at least one of their affiliated songwriter groups) that the USCO’s oversight and rulemaking authority concerning matters related to 2020-12 should be viewed as being narrowly limited.

The IMCOs have stressed on multiple occasions through their USCO Comments a strong belief that Congress, by its very construction of the Music Modernization Act (MMA), intends the Office to have broad and expansive authority to oversee and guide the implementation of the MMA by the Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC). That is especially so in regard to ensuring transparency, reliability and fairness regarding the safeguarding of music creator rights, the class of persons for whom the MMA was most clearly enacted to protect pursuant to Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution.

The main issue of concern addressed at the November 13, 2020 meeting was the oversight and disposition of accrued, unmatched royalties collected and held by Digital Music Providers and subsequently distributed pursuant to private negotiated agreements with music publishers. It is believed by the IMCOs that as regards those agreements and royalties, some or all of the parties thereto were very likely aware at the time of negotiation and execution, that (i) such confidential agreements and payments concerned royalties accrued from the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of musical works owned by unrelated third parties; (ii) little to no effort had been made to properly identify rightful ownership, and (iii) such accruals might soon be subject to payment rules under the MMA that would require strictly delineated sharing of such “permanently” unmatched royalties with music creators by music publishers (including a minimum floor of 50%) after the conducting by the MLC of bona fide searches for rightful owners.

Further assertions were made by the IMCOs at the meeting that after three years of discussions, still no informed estimate had yet been made by Digital Music Providers of the aggregate amounts of unmatched royalties both still being held and already distributed. Thereafter, one knowledgeable representative of Digital Music Providers estimated that while there remain hundreds of millions of dollars in accrued, unmatched royalties in the possession of the Digital Music Providers, tens of millions of dollars in accrued unmatched royalties were indeed turned over directly to music publishers pursuant to the terms of the confidential, private negotiated agreements.

As was also made clear during the meeting, the IMCOs have no direct information as to the content of such private negotiated agreements, and no direct information as to what became of the unmatched royalties such music publishers received.

Several music publishers have claimed in ex parte letters to the USCO that they indeed shared such unmatched royalties with their affiliated music creators, but no specific information has been provided as to the methodology and details of such sharing, including whether the principles and and guarantees eventually set forth in the MMA as enacted were applied.1 Moreover as the IMCOs reported at the meeting, an informal and ongoing process of canvassing creators currently being conducted by each MCNA member organization have yet to confirm a single instance in which a songwriter or composer received a royalty statement indicating that portions of such accrued, unmatched royalties were included (though they may have been) and on what basis.

As the IMCOs asserted at the meeting, were such unmatched royalties paid to songwriters and composers by music publishers on terms resembling the MMA rules concerning music creator protections (as either drafted or eventually enacted), it seems counter-intuitive that that no line item would appear anywhere in accounting statements indicating the source of such payments, not only as a matter of sound accounting practice, but of earned good will. No other music creator groups present at the meeting challenged or contradicted these ongoing findings or assertions. In any event, as noted, it seems that the burden of demonstrating the details of such payments is more properly placed on the music publishers who claim to have made them, which could be as simple as each publisher disclosing a properly predicated and binding assertion that the payments were made, how many were made, what was the aggregate payment, and how was each songwriter’s share determined.2

Under such circumstances as they currently exist, as SGA President Rick Carnes pointed out at the meeting, asking interested parties to render opinions on the minutiae of proposed rules concerning the disposition of accrued unmatched royalties –with only some parties having an understanding of how the private agreements operated, who got paid, who didn’t, and why– is a difficult position in which to place the IMCOs and other parties with important, related interests.

As Mr. Carnes pointed out, the issues of (i) how to protect the rights of those music creators and copyright owners who did not participate in the privately negotiated agreements by ensuring that there is an opportunity to actually match those already-distributed royalties to their proper owners and to effect the prompt payment of such sums, (ii) how to balance accounts once such proper identifications have been made, while also ensuring that affiliated music creators have been properly paid by their music publishers concerning royalties collected under the private negotiated agreements that otherwise would have flowed through the MLC and been explicitly subject to MMA distribution requirements, (iii) how to address demands of Digital Music Providers that they not be made to pay twice for the same unmatched uses, and (iv) how to ensure that such private negotiated agreements are not utilized in the future in attempts to override the provisions of the MMA, all need to be addressed prior to a proper analysis of how most effectively to move forward.3

Thus, as was stated at the meeting, while the IMCOs agree the MMA makes clear that ALL accrued unmatched royalties for unauthorized reproductions and distributions dating back to inception must be turned over to the MLC by Digital Music Providers, and that the term “generally accepted accounting principles” used in the Act in no way provides an exception to that unambiguous provision, the crucial questions enumerated above also need to be immediately addressed as matters of fairness and transparency mandated by the Act.

As to the very important issue of retroactive effect of the MMA provisions concerning guaranteed music creator participation in the distribution of permanently unmatched royalties at or above the fifty percent level, the IMCOs adamantly believe, as stated at the meeting, that it is wholly illogical for any interested party to argue that Congress intended as it did to require that all accrued, unmatched royalties be rendered to the MLC by Digital Music Providers back to each service’s date of inception, but that the songwriter, composer, transparency and good faith protections guaranteed by the Act would not otherwise be applicable in the event of premature disgorgement of unmatched royalties by Digital Music Providers to music publishers pursuant to prior agreements. This is an issue that certainly requires further attention, and calls for more comprehensive discussion than for which there was time at the meeting.

As was noted several times by various speakers, the Chair of the Senate Judiciary has warned that absent a fair and transparent resolution of these complex issues, the MMA may become a magnet for litigation, the very opposite effect that it was intended to achieve. The IMCOs wholeheartedly agree, and stand ready to assist the USCO in taking all reasonable measures to achieve the transparency, fairness and robust oversight that the legislation demands in order to avoid that undesirable result.

To reiterate in closing, as the IMCOs tried to make clear at the meeting, voluntary disclosure of the specific details of the privately negotiated agreements, redacted to protect legitimate privacy and antitrust concerns, is an important prerequisite to achieving those goals. The IMCOs further repeat their stated beliefs that the USCO has the singular ability if not to compel, at least to facilitate such disclosures in a timely manner, and respectfully urge it to do so.

Further comments of SGA, SCL and MCNA will be forthcoming in regard to the proposed rulemaking by next week’s deadline. As stated at the conclusion of the meeting, however, the IMCOs believe that all parties would benefit by a brief extension for the submissions of such comments until the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday in order to allow for further discussions among the parties. The IMCOs acknowledge a certain lack of unified support for this suggestion at the meeting, and active opposition by at least one music publisher representative, but continue to believe it to be an advisable accommodation. Those parties wishing to abide by the original deadline would always be free to do so, as was explicitly pointed out.

The IMCOs thank the USCO for scheduling the ex parte discussion, and look forward to continuing this constructive dialog.

Respectfully submitted,

Charles J. Sanders
Outside Counsel
Songwriters Guild of America, Inc.

cc: Regan Smith, General Counsel, The United States Copyright Office
Rick Carnes, SGA President
Ashley Irwin, SCL President
Eddie Schwartz, MCNA President

  1. At least one publisher has indicated an alleged willingness to share details of such payments with any writer who makes inquiry as to his or her own works, an unlikely scenario considering that a huge percentage of writers have no knowledge of the private negotiated agreements in the first place, and –to the knowledge of the IMCOs based on informal canvassing– have not been directly informed about them by their publishers. See, e.g., Ex Parte letter from Sony/ATV dated October 28, 2020: “It has been SATV’s practice to explain to our writers who inquire how these royalties are distributed and reflected on their statements.”

2. Likewise, it seems that the burden of demonstrating how much each Digital Music Provider paid to music publishers is more properly placed on the services who claim to have made the payments, which in turn could be as simple as disclosing a properly predicated and binding assertion that the payments were made, how many were made, what was the aggregate payment, and how was each publisher’s share determined. It is anticipated that such details may be forthcoming from Digital Music Providers in their reporting under the MMA, but that remains uncertain.

3 That is especially so in light of the apparent assertions of one or more Digital Music Providers that they may forego the limited safe harbor provisions provided by the MMA by not turning over to the MLC the full amount of accrued, unmatched royalties dating back to inception of use, probably under the assumption that the potential running of applicable statutes of limitations will provide the same protections as the safe harbor without payment of the royalties due. The IMCO raised this statute of limitations issue at the meeting, and was gratified that at least one Digital Music Provider representative felt that this was an issue worthy of further discussion, hopefully with the important input of the USCO. See also, related comment of DLC that “…a DMP could make the rational choice to forego the payment of accrued royalties entirely, and save that money to use in defending itself against any infringement suits.” Comments Of Digital Licensee Coordinator, Inc. In Response To Notice Of Proposed Rulemaking , Docket 2020-12, Document COLC 2020-0011-0008 (Aug. 17, 2020) at 4.

by Trichordist Editor