The US Copyright Office solicited comments from the public about the operations of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.  The first round of those comments (called “initial comments”) were due in November and the second round of those comments (which are called “reply comments” because they essentially comment on the initial comments) were due December 20.

All the comments focus on some central themes that seem to be on everyone’s mind which can be boiled down to oversight, oversight and more oversight.  While the DLC controls the MLC’s purse strings, the MLC has been given largely uncontrolled power over songwriters that needs to be checked by the government on behalf of the governed.

David Lowery did not file initial comments but as he notes, developments made him feel compelled to speak up in the reply comments.  We’re going to post his reply comments in four parts, and then we’ll post other commenters who we think made really good points (like CISAC and BIEM among others).  (If you want to skip ahead and read the entire comment, you can download it here.)  This is Part 4 of four parts.

Comments of David C. Lowery, Notice of Inquiry for Blanket License Implementation Regulations Issued by the United States Copyright Office Concerning the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act of 2018

Additional MLC Oversight: Transparency and Financial Disclosure

There is little financial disclosure required of the MLC or the DLC. As far as DLC is concerned, I expect they will represent the interests of the services. They are also paying the money for MLC which in a way is itself an inherent conflict but is under the oversight of the Copyright Royalty Judges. For the moment, DLC does not appear to be involved in the MLC operations or decision-making. Time may reveal a need to examine this relationship more closely for financial disclosures.

However, the MLC is mandated to engage in many operations fraught with moral hazard, not the least of which is matching and the black box distributions. The MLC has already demonstrated that it has the ability to pick the least appropriate vendors for inexplicable reasons other than the past ownership of HFA by the National Music Publishers Association.

This past ownership creates a special disclosure situation regarding the selection of HFA as a vendor given how long Title I had been in the works (the rumored “SIRA II”). Was the sale of HFA conditioned on HFA becoming the principle vendor of the MLC (like HFA was to be the “General Designated Agent” in SIRA I)? Was Blackstone’s withdrawal of opposition to MMA in the Senate conditioned upon some benefit flowing to HFA? Has the vendor selection process been the kabuki dance it appears to be? As my friend and co-amici Guy Forsyth wrote, “Americans are freedom loving people and nothing says freedom like getting away with it.” Did they get away with it? If the Copyright Office doesn’t force disclosure, we’ll never know unless the issue gets litigated in one of the pending lawsuits against Spotify—and isn’t redacted.

It only seems reasonable that the MLC should disclose any incentives, payments or other benefits received by its board members, non-voting members (DiMA, NMPA, NSAI or SONA for example), officers and other key employees from any person or entity MLC does business with. These benefits should include payments of the administrative assessment, real estate transactions paid for by the assessment, or shares of stock or units of Ether granted to anyone in the supply chain. This kind of anti-payola affidavit is required of various consultants in the music business already so there seems to be no reason why it should not be required for persons of influence at the MLC. And, of course, all such affidavits or disclosures should be part of the public record so that everyone from songwriters to Members of Congress should be able to have a clear picture of who is involved with MLC.

This will be particularly applicable to any payments from the black box which is truly other people’s money. Any proposed payments of the black box should be itemized, published online in an easy to read format prior to being distributed and certified by an independent CPA that is not related to MLC or any board member or vendor. This disclosure may help reduce the inevitable lawsuits. In fact, it would be best if any CPA undertaking certification work for MLC should agree in advance that they would do no other work for the MLC related parties for a significant period of time, say five years.

The “interim application of accrued royalties” is another clause that is fraught with conflicts of interest. Respectfully, the Copyright Office should clarify that MLC board members act as fiduciaries in their decisions to take money from the black box to meet the MLC’s expenses in the case of a shortfall from the administrative assessment. If they’re not fiduciaries, an explanation would be helpful.

In fact, the entire clause relating to the “interim application of accrued royalties” is itself vague and ambiguous. Consider the language:

In the event that the administrative assessment, together with any funding from voluntary contributions as provided in subparagraphs (A) and (B), is inadequate to cover current collective total costs, the collective, with approval of its board of directors, may apply unclaimed accrued royalties on an interim basis to defray such costs, subject to future reimbursement of such royalties from future collections of the assessment.

This paragraph is, in my judgment, one of the most important yet least discussed clauses in the entirety of Title I. Absent implementing rules to the contrary, the clause allows MLC to effectively write itself interest free and nonrecourse loans from other people’s money to cover the costs of a budget that MLC itself determines at a burn rate solely in the control of MLC—currently with no oversight by anyone.

The clause raises a number of questions about the meaning of the statutory language which the Congress likely intended to be clarified in regulations regarding the spending of other people’s money by the MLC. In particular. terms in the statutory language that must be known in order to determine what sums are the “costs” concerned, when are they determined, and what happens if the loan once taken is never repaid. (Which raises income tax issues if nothing else.)

The statutory language also leaves to regulations what happens if the songwriters whose monies are taken from the black box and spent by MLC are later identified because they come forward or due to matching efforts of the DLC or the MLC.

Are those songwriters supposed to wait to be paid from “future collections of the assessment,” if ever? Which future collections? The next assessment after those songwriters are identified? Or another one some time in the future?

Are they to be paid in the normal course at the next accounting period after becoming identified? Immediately upon being identified?

And most importantly perhaps, how will anyone outside of the MLC know this loan is occurring? The mere fact that a board of directors thinks it’s a good idea to avoid themselves having to make voluntary contributions to the MLC’s operations by writing themselves an interest free non-recourse loan from monies they hold in trust (or should hold in trust) is a terrible position to put on board members voting against the loan.

I would respectfully suggest that this entire clause has no place in legislation that was sold as a great boon for songwriters. If it must be in the law, then the Copyright Office has a golden opportunity to shed sunlight on another mysterious operation of the MLC.
I suggest several areas of mandatory disclosure. First, the balance of the black box should be public and prominently posted on a monthly basis to the MLC’s website. Songwriters should be able to search for their titles and determine how much is being held. SoundExchange currently has this feature for the public as do other societies around the world.

The black box should be held in a true escrow account by an escrow agent (such as an unrelated bank) that has clear instructions in regulations as to how and when such funds are to be disbursed, either as a loan or royalty payment.

If the board of MLC decides to write itself a loan from these funds, they should not be able to use the black box as a piggy bank, but rather should borrow against identified funds based on available metadata so that repayment can be accomplished efficiently.
For example, if Songwriter X can look up on the MLC’s website that the MLC board borrowed money for songs A, B and C that were unmatched at the time of the loan, then if Songwriter X is later identified, she can demand payment of her royalties from MLC which the MLC should be required to pay from its current accounts and not take from future black box payments.

Failing to require payment from fresh cash will create an endlessly iterative process by which MLC borrows from Peter to pay Paul, using old money to pay new obligations.
Finally, all these transactions should be well documented and those documents should be published on the MLC website. For example, the statute requires board “approval” to initiate the loan. That approval should take the form of a recorded board vote with minutes to be published on the MLC website, or better yet in the Federal Register. The loan should be documented in the form of a promissory note to the escrow agent. It should also be clear that the MLC board has a fiduciary duty to the songwriters and publishers whose money it is borrowing that is separate from the board’s safe harbor elsewhere in Title I.

Having just gone through the PledgeMusic debacle, I am sensitized more than ever to companies that go insolvent while handling the money of artists with the result that the artists never get paid. If the MLC cannot meet its obligations and requires “interim” loans from the black box, how is that not the case of a company operating while insolvent? Why should the officers and directors of MLC enjoy any lower standard of care or responsibility than they would if they were operating any other company while insolvent?

Surely this was not the intent of Congress.

Finally, I note that the budget proposed by the MLC to the DLC was less than the administrative assessment agreed to in the CRB settlement. Respectfully, the Copyright Office ought to make clear that this shortfall does not trigger the MLC’s ability to take an “interim” loan in the amount of the shortfall. This issue highlights another point requiring clarification—at what point is a shortfall determined? It seems that it should be at a time the shortfall occurs following investigation into why it occurred by an inspector general-type person (such as the Inspector General of the Library of Congress).

The MLC knows how much it’s got in its rather rich kitty to spend on all its various activities. If it also knows that if it goes over budget it can write itself interest free loans from the black box based on its own internal decision and authority, what incentive is there to stay on budget?

Additional MLC Oversight: Transparency and Songwriter Ombudsman

While Congress and the Copyright Office theoretically retain oversight over the MLC, this is of cold comfort to songwriters who are run over by MLC, its policies and its vendors. The vast unmatched problem is the most obvious foreseeable outcome where songwriters need a safety valve, but there are other possibilities.

For example, if the MLC continues HFA’s sad history of simply failing to pay songwriters, it’s just not adequate to say that songwriters can audit MLC or sue. Songwriters should not have to incur even more costs or engage in the labyrinthine process of individual or class action lawsuits against an entity funded by the largest corporations in the world.

The only real leverage that songwriters have over MLC is to persuade the Copyright Office not to re-designate the incumbent. In order for that to be a realistic threat, the Copyright Office regulations should provide for a feedback loop that songwriters can avail themselves of that the Copyright Office must take into account when determining its re-designation. Such complaints must be included in the Copyright Office’s oversight report to Congress. As such a practice is essentially the Copyright Office setting a policy or regulating itself, I see no reason why that practice cannot be set forth in regulations.

However, the Copyright Office is in an ideal position to create an ombudsman-type position with oversight of the entire MLC/DLC process. Such a role would allow the world’s songwriters an immediate outlet for surfacing negligence by MLC. By preserving anonymity of those complaining, any songwriter—whether or not affiliated with MLC—could have an outlet to report any objectionable behavior while being protected along the lines of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

The ombudsman should be completely unrelated to the incestuous practices of MLC and HFA, should be a paid position deducted from the millions in MLC’s rich operating budget, and should be meaningfully consulted in any re-designation.

Creating an ombudsman role would benefit the entire system by maintaining a watchdog and whistleblower role that would help keep the system honest.

Additional MLC Oversight: MLC and DLC Database Conflict of Interest Policy

I would also respectfully call the Copyright Office’s attention to the inherent conflicts between MLC and its vendor HFA in terms of reselling data HFA acquires by virtue of its role as MLCvendor. If the Copyright Office does not prohibit HFA from selling for other commercial purposes the data it acquires through its engagement by MLC to facilitate the compulsory blanket license, the Congress will have just handed HFA a near insurmountable advantage over its competitors. Remember there are other licenses like “micro sync” licenses that are outside of the compulsory mechanical license. Currently there is robust competition and innovation in this market segment, but without this prohibition HFA would crush its young competitors.

The same could be said of ConsenSys, which seems to be desperately seeking use cases for its Ether cryptocurrency. This creates an odd set of incentives for an MLC vendor, not to mention a need for disclosure by the MLC of any stock grants or Ether transfers.

Songwriters are compelled to do business with MLC despite bitter complaints about the imbalance in favor of major publishers in its governance. Songwriters are also compelled to do business with MLC despite bitter complaints about HFA due to what can be described as a bait and switch where the MLC pushed out a lot of hope only to go back to business as usual with long-time cronies.

This cannot be what Congress had in mind, and is even greater evidence for why the Copyright Office should require MLC candidates to fully disclose their vendors and their relationship with their vendors before designation.

Respectfully, any data vendor of the MLC should not be allowed to leverage their privileged role to private benefit after being paid absurd amounts of money to fail upwards.

As Madison said, we’re not angels. But songwriters rely on the Copyright Office to be our better angels.

Thank you for providing this opportunity to discuss these important issues.

Sincerely,
David C. Lowery

The US Copyright Office solicited comments from the public about the operations of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.  The first round of those comments (called “initial comments”) were due in November and the second round of those comments (which are called “reply comments” because they essentially comment on the initial comments) were due December 20.

All the comments focus on some central themes that seem to be on everyone’s mind which can be boiled down to oversight, oversight and more oversight.  While the DLC controls the MLC’s purse strings, the MLC has been given largely uncontrolled power over songwriters that needs to be checked by the government on behalf of the governed.

David Lowery did not file initial comments but as he notes, developments made him feel compelled to speak up in the reply comments.  We’re going to post his reply comments in four parts, and then we’ll post other commenters who we think made really good points (like CISAC and BIEM among others).  (If you want to skip ahead and read the entire comment, you can download it here.)  This is Part 3 of four parts.

Comments of David C. Lowery, Notice of Inquiry for Blanket License Implementation Regulations Issued by the United States Copyright Office Concerning the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act of 2018

MLC’s Reporting and Failure to Account

This section responds to the Office’s question regarding MLC’s Payments and Statements of Account.

As an overall comment, the MLC should be required to publicly post at least an aggregated version of all information it receives from DMPs supporting the calculation of royalties (transactions, TCC, deductions from gross, etc.). It will be impossible for songwriters to conduct a desktop audit of their statements with their accountants if key elements of the calculations are missing. Respectfully, the Copyright Office really needs to understand how many times we have seen this movie and how we definitely know how it ends.

This is the old hide the ball trick where royalty statements include everything except the one key piece of information needed to duplicate the reported calculations. Again, let’s not have meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. The Copyright Office has a golden opportunity to get this right—so please, please take heed. It will save a lot of time and litigation.

For example, the MLC is already saying things like this:

Accordingly, the MLC believes that any regulations obligating the MLC to distribute royalty reports and payments to copyright owners on a monthly basis should not require that such reports and payments be for a particular royalty period, which is at least in part outside of the MLC’s control.

Actually, this is wrong. If the MLC reports do not designate which period the payment corresponds to, there will be no way for songwriters to know what they are being paid for. This boils down to receiving a statement that says, here’s some money, or worse, no money for you. If there is no explanation of when the royalties were earned or last paid on a service-by-service basis, there is no way for songwriters to know if any service is current.

Plus, the Congress gave the MLC fearsome powers over DMPs and songwriters. If services are late, we expect MLC to chase them and chase them hard. They wanted this job, and now they have it. If songwriters have to wait until MLC get around to auditing trillions of transactions to know a service is late paying, unpaid money is as good as gone even for matched works.

As drafted, Title I places great emphasis on the user of the blanket license’s obligations to account and pay royalties but there is no corollary obligation for MLC. Indeed, it seems that the MLC is already backtracking on timely payments by lowering expectations of timely DMP payments. The DMP has a lot to lose if they are not timely with payments and statements.

There is virtually no downside for the MLC. I respectfully suggest that there be some teeth put into the MLC’s failure to account, for both the “known knowns” and the “known unknowns,” that tracks the penalties on the license user.

It does not appear that sufficient attention has been paid to the MMA’s major change in the compulsory licensing structure—the insertion of another gatekeeper into the stream of payments, a gatekeeper that has selected the former affiliate of one of its principal promoters with a known and well litigated history of failures for the very functions it is to take on with a Congressional mandate.

Incredibly, no one has included language addressing what happens if the MLC defaults. Auditing years after the fact is not going to get it done. In fact, the audit language in Title I is so antiquated that it could easily have come from a 1980s record deal. (Not to mention the meaningless and expensive requirement of a CPA to conduct royalty audits.) The audit language is simply not fit for purpose in a world of trillions of individual transactions rather than hundreds of millions of CDs. Songwriters forced to use the compulsory license need a much more immediate and much toothier remedy against the government’s MLC monopoly. In other words, the Music Modernization Act already needs to be modernized and the Copyright Office has a chance to do it—but the clock is ticking.

Language could be adopted in regulations that mirrors the statutory language for default by users of the blanket license, substituting the copyright owner for the MLC and the MLC for the digital music provider. For example:

“If the copyright owner does not receive the monthly payment and the monthly and annual statements of account from the MLC when due for reasons within the control of the MLC, the owner may give written notice to the MLC, unless the default is remedied not later than 30 days after the date on which the notice is sent, the MLC’s ability to administer the compulsory license for such copyright owner will be automatically terminated. “

Because the Copyright Office is charged with implementing regulations under a broad statutory grant, it seems that this loose end could be remedied in regulations without need of an amendment to Title I, particularly because the failure to include such a provision benefits those who controlled the pen for the drafting of Title I.

The Copyright Office should also take into account any failures to account when reviewing the re-designation of MLCI at the five year review mark.

Additional MLC Oversight: FOIA

Continuing the theme of sunlight as the best remedy, please consider the relationship of the Freedom of Information Act and the MLC. The Copyright Office complies with Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIA). The public interest would be served in having access to all correspondence and internal materials not subject to a FOIA exemption that relate to Title I of the Music Modernization Act as well as the “address unknown” NOI process that preceded and contributed to it.

Availability of these materials is particularly relevant given the lack of transparency required of MLC and the DLC (odd redactions in CRB filings for the administrative assessment is but one example) and the general mystery of why HFA was selected by MLC given the history of HFA with NMPA and the legislative process.

Rather than wait for a FOIA request for these materials, the Copyright Office should voluntarily make these materials available on Copyright.gov. I would recommend this process be repeated annually if not more frequently.

To be continued in Part 4

The US Copyright Office solicited comments from the public about the operations of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.  The first round of those comments (called “initial comments”) were due in November and the second round of those comments (which are called “reply comments” because they essentially comment on the initial comments) were due December 20.

All the comments focus on some central themes that seem to be on everyone’s mind which can be boiled down to oversight, oversight and more oversight.  While the DLC controls the MLC’s purse strings, the MLC has been given largely uncontrolled power over songwriters that needs to be checked by the government on behalf of the governed.

David Lowery did not file initial comments but as he notes, developments made him feel compelled to speak up in the reply comments.  We’re going to post his reply comments in four parts, and then we’ll post other commenters who we think made really good points (like CISAC and BIEM among others).  (If you want to skip ahead and read the entire comment, you can download it here.)  This is Part 2 of four parts.

Comments of David C. Lowery, Notice of Inquiry for Blanket License Implementation Regulations Issued by the United States Copyright Office Concerning the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act of 2018

Failure is Not an Option

Given my perspective of HFA’s horrendous track record of reporting to independent songwriters and publishers of both Anglo-American and all foreign language repertoire, the Copyright Office really must demand public oversight of the MLC in the crucial run-up to the License Availability Date.

We don’t want to find out on January 2, 2021 that the thing doesn’t work and get either a cobbled together manual accounting statement or no accounting statement or payment at all—and consequentially an exponential increase in the unmatched “black box” monies. I cannot imagine that the DLC wants this result, either.

The Congress did not mandate that the MLC could send out defective or placeholder accounting statements with no or low royalty payments. Unless the Copyright Office regulations holds their feet to the fire, this is entirely possible particularly if there is no downside for MLC. It is also important to keep in mind that the major publishers receive direct accountings from the services and will not use the MLC in all likelihood. These would be the same major publishers on the MLC board.

Do you think that the MLC is likely to punish itself for failing to do its job, especially for unrepresented songwriters or non-Anglo-American repertoire? I don’t. If the unmatched royalties are liquidated in the usual fashion they will be paid out by market share to the biggest publishers. Yes, whether intended or not there is a known perverse financial incentive for the biggest publishers to hope the MLC does a poor job. A large unmatched royalties pool will likely benefit big publishers. In theory the Unmatched Royalties Oversight Committee is supposed to look after this and counterbalance this mismatched incentive structure. However, it appears there is no funding allocated to the UROC. Thus, it is not clear how this oversight will be performed.

Respectfully, the Copyright Office should consider that its role is about to change—going forward the Office has been charged by Congress with an oversight responsibility for the entire process. If I end up being correct—that MLC will not only will fail to launch on the License Availability Date but it will be in total meltdown—the Congress must be able to know of any failures well in advance to be able to apply the pressure through saving legislation of some kind, or to at least have some notice there is a serious problem.

It is well within the Office’s current regulatory mandate to specify the deliverables the MLC must make public at key dates leading to launch for 1/1/21. Because there will be a strong tendency caused by extreme moral hazard for the MLC to view its operations through rose colored glasses, these deliverables require a maximum of public disclosure and peer review in order to be both credible and informative.

Here are some considerations the Copyright Office may wish to take into account:

(a) Systems should be publicly disclosed for peer review and comment on rolling basis starting immediately and continuing on a monthly basis thereafter until the launch, and then after the launch to determine how effective the systems work. If MLC fails operational milestones, then detailed explanation must be made in public with a plan to get back on track.

(b) There is no competition for MLC given its quango status and Congressional exclusivity, so no need for secrecy or redactions in its filings.

(c) Systems tests and certifications should be conducted on no less than monthly basis starting immediately with milestones to completion. These milestones and their results should be published in the Federal Register and on Copyright.gov and also circulated to Hill staff.

(d) If MLC is not fully operational by 9/30/20 then both the Copyright Office and the MLC leadership should report to Congress on why and critical path to full operational functionality. Because of the unprecedented nature of the MLC enterprise, “full operational functionality” may be a moving target, but MLC should not be able to set a low bar that results in only the rich people getting paid.

To be continued in Part 3