Category: Music Modernization Act

Guest Post: The False Double Payment Bottom of the MMA Black Box

By Chris Castle

[T-Editor says: This post first appeared on MusicTechPolicy]

The Dog Who Didn’t Bark On the Mirror

There seems to be some concern about pre-Music Modernization Act confidential lump sum payments of accrued black box monies under direct licenses or settlement agreements.  Services are promoting the idea that these payments must be deducted from the cumulative black box payments required for services to get the benefit of the limitation on liability and reach back safe harbor. 

That limitation on liability, of course, comes with a condition that the services use “good faith, commercially reasonable efforts” to match works to copyright owners.  Uses that remain unmatched are then turned over to the Mechanical Licensing Collective for matching and distribution.

The Digital Music Providers [“DMPs”] are now promoting the payment of black box as an option for which they can elect to take the limitation on liability.   The Digital Licensee Coordinator [representing the DMPs] tells us “If the regulations make it less likely that a DMP will be able to rely on that liability protection when it needs it—i.e., if it increases the risk that a court would deem a DMP to not have complied with the requirements in section 115(d)(10)—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.”

The SOCAN company MediaNet tells us that absent some aggressive concessions by the Congress to essentially re-write the Copyright Act in their favor, “MediaNet may decline to take advantage of the limitation on liability, which may deprive copyright owners of additional accrued royalties.”  

The DMPs have somehow managed to convince themselves that payments of unallocated sums under settlement agreements (which they weren’t required to match before the MMA) and payments of unallocated sums under the MMA’s black box (which they are required to match under the MMA) are a “double payment.”  While easy to say, “double payment” makes it sound like someone paid twice for the same thing.  That would be bad if it were true.  

But it’s not.

Betting and Strangers

Certain DMPs and certain publishers made settlement agreements of prior unpaid royalties.  We don’t know exactly what gave rise to those agreements but we do know that they covered unmatched (and therefore unallocated) black box payments.  Because the payments were unmatched, they were necessarily a lump sum payment to the participating publisher (although the amounts may have been reduced by commissions for administering the lump sum distributions under so-far confidential settlements).  

At the time of the settlement, nobody did the work to match the unallocated.  This is important for at least two reasons:  Because the works were not matched, the lump sum couldn’t have been allocated to specific works owned by strangers to the settlement.   Therefore there was no initial payment to those strangers, the strangers were not represented in the transaction, the strangers did not authorize the settlement of their claims, and there was no legal basis for the parties to settle ripe but inchoate claims the strangers could have made had they been asked.

The lump sum settlement was evidently based on market share of the then-unallocated black box.  Market share payments would be a typical way to avoid doing the work of matching.  It’s like a DMP saying to a publisher “I’ll make you a bet—if you have 10% market share of the known knowns, I’ll bet that the most I owe you for then known unknowns is 10% of the cash value of the unallocated black box.  Particularly if you are the first payment.”

Why not do the matching at the time?  We’ll come back to that.  

Betting Secrecy

The settling publisher feels they made a good bet and accepts the terms.  The DSP adds one additional post closing condition—the bet must be secret.  The settling publisher will likely voluntarily distribute the monies to their own songwriters on a ratio of earnings (similar to market share), so it can’t be entirely secret.  And there are no secrets in the music business.  But given these realities, why must the bet be secret?  

To keep the strangers to the bet in the dark.

If the bet is announced, strangers to the bet may decide they need to look into how much they are owed.  They may not be willing to take a bet.  They may want what the statute contemplates—good faith commercially reasonable efforts to actually match.

After the DMPs negotiated their safe harbor in the MMA—remembering that the black box payment was never sold to songwriters as optional—it became apparent that all the strangers were now going to be paid for all the uses that were never matched as a part of the lump sum bet.  All the DMPs efforts to keep the strangers in the dark were going to be exposed.  And exposed all at once.  To what end is this secrecy?  Probably for the same reason the DMPs have never posted the unmatched (unlike Royalties Reunited or the AFM-SAG/AFTRA Trust Funds.

Who’s At Fault?

The settling publishers have done absolutely nothing wrong here.  They could have pressed for matching but chose to take the bet.  Could be high, could be low, but seemed like a good bet at the time.  

Plus, by making the bet, they did not take anything away from strangers.  The DMPs still owed an obligation to the strangers.  The settling publishers did not owe the strangers anything.  

This is why the bet is not a double payment so long as the settling publishers are not claiming any uses that were released and settled, which they are not as far as we can tell.  

If the DMPs made a bad bet, that’s on them.  

The DMPs cannot now reduce a cumulative unmatched black box by the prior bets they made.  And of course, as transactions are matched, the unknown knowns become known knowns and are paid out.  In order to accomplish the purpose of the statute, all the transactions must be reported. 

The MMA “deal” was for cumulative payment of the black box.  If settling publishers end up having matched works in the black box—when the unknown become known—those per-transaction payments can be offset to the extent they were covered by a prior release agreed to by a bettor.

But what they cannot do is simply say I made a bet with these guys, so I’m going to claw that back from what I owe to other people who are strangers to the bet.  That’s not a double payment either to the bettor or the stranger to the bet.

Letter of Misdirection

I also do not understand a conversation about letters of direction in this context.  As known unknowns get matched, the DMP should render a statement.  

If the known unknown becomes a known known, that statement will reflect at a minimum the title, copyright owner and the usage as well as whatever other metadata the regulations require.  The now known knowns will either be payable as matched works or have already been covered by a settlement and release for the corresponding period.

In the former case, the payable royalty will be available.  In the latter case, the royalty will have already been paid as part of the settlement.  If that settlement royalty is included in the corresponding black box, that settled usage would be deducted as already paid, which would have a corresponding reduction in the total amount of accrued but unpaid royalties.  That’s not a letter of direction, that’s an offset against otherwise payable royalties due to matching.  

Alternatively, the settling publisher would not be allowed to make a claim for the periods subject to the release because they have no live claims, assuming a total settlement and release for the corresponding accounting period.

Said another way, whatever transactions are in the pending file stay in the pending file with accrued royalties until claimed.  Prior settlements can only be deducted from the transaction lines in the pending file that are for songs owned or controlled by publishers that fall under a prior settlement.  

Tolling the Statute of Limitations

The way the DMPs have actually harmed the strangers is by keeping quiet on this idea that the reach back safe harbor is optional.  They could have raised this issue during the drafting of MMA and after.  But they waited until they had scared away anyone except Eight Mile Style from suing while in theory statutes of limitations ran out starting on 1/1/18 at a minimum.  They used the MMA as a kind of in terrorem stick.

That is grossly unfair.  This has to be changed so that strangers who didn’t make the bet, who didn’t get the payment, and who were silent with their ripe claims since 1/1/18 are not harmed.  

It’s all fine for the DLC to say they do a cost benefit analysis and elect not to take the safe harbor while allowing strangers to be duped.  They should not be able to fool both Congress and the strangers.  Any statute of limitations running since 1/1/18 should be tolled, perhaps under the Copyright Office emergency powers.

Songwriter Black Box Payments

It is rare for a songwriter to have a royalty claim on unallocated catalog-wide payments such as black box monies absent a specific negotiated deal point.  This is a point of some contention with songwriters, so the Copyright Office should look into it as part of the black box study if nothing else.

This black box issue that keeps coming up may be many things, but a double payment it’s not.  

by Trichordist Editor

@digitalmusicnws Asks Is the MLC Putting Smaller Streaming Platforms Out of Business? — ArtistRightsWatch

By Editor Charlie

Dylan Smith at Digital Music News asks the question, “Is the MLC Putting Smaller Streaming Platforms out of Business?” We’ve raised this very question long, long ago, back in early 2018 when the Music Modernization Act was getting passed and the chorus of braying by MLC supporters was at a fever pitch. Everyone ignored the obvious flaws in the legislation, especially the anticompetitive nuances that Dylan has highlighted today. 

But understand–this issue is not new. We raised it in the blogs, and Chris raised it to Congressional staff directly–he said the response was a hangdog “I know, I know. It’s what the parties wanted.”

In other words, Congressional staff knew it was stupid, but were being railroaded into doing it anyway by “the parties” (plural) and there are so many hours in the day. When staff said “the parties” back in 2018 before there was an MLC, guess who they meant? One of those parties was the Digital Media Association which still runs the “Digital Licensee Coordinator” or the DLC–which is essentially the companies with trillion-dollar market caps who we think of as Big Tech. (The DLC’s membership application is here.)

And as you will see, it’s more like is the DLC putting smaller streaming platforms out of business. (See the DLC membership assessment fees “explainer” for DLC members.)

DLC Members

And since the DLC appears dominated by Google, Amazon and Spotify, maybe the real issue is that it’s Thursday, so of course Big Tech wants to keep competition weak and vulnerable to being shut down or acquired. And the MLC and its promoters did nothing to stop it because of the pact between the MLC and the DLC that they would each keep anyone out of the vicinity of the Copyright Royalty Judges who might get in their way. 

Of course the most ludicrous part of this is that these trillion-dollar companies don’t just eat the cost of running the DLC since by the time you get finished reading this post, they will have collectively grossed some sum well, well in excess of the annual operating costs.

But–as we will see, there may be some hope for brave startups to challenge the insider deal that penalizes them without giving them an opportunity to speak up for themselves.

As Dylan writes in DMN:

According to the document [establishing the insiders’ allocation of the fee structure], digital service providers have to cover the MLC’s startup fee ($33.5 million) via a “startup assessment,” or “the one-time administrative assessment for the startup phase of the Mechanical Licensing Collective.” This payment must be made alongside the first annual bill, which is due on February 15th, 2021; the second annual fee disclosure is due in November of the same year and must be paid by January of 2022, for a considerable overall obligation.

Total-wise, platforms “that have a Unique Sound Recordings Count” – or the average number of “royalty-bearing” works streamed or downloaded each month – of less than 5,000 will pay an annual minimum fee of $5,000, to a $60,000 annual minimum fee for those with over 5,000 such works. For DSPs that break the 5,000 threshold, it appears that 2021 will bring with it a low-end bill of $120,000.

Significantly, our source proceeded to indicate: “That’s just the minimum – the total assessment is dependent on market share, which is basically unpredictable at this point. And that’s on top of mechanical royalties for those who use the blanket license.”

This completely out of whack cost structure was obviously a major, major flaw in the Music Modernization Act–specifically the incredibly muddled and meandering Title I which established the Mechanical Licensing Collective and the DLC. The chickens are now coming home to roost.

As Chris wrote in Newsmax Finance on August 20, 2018:

[T]he problem [with the MMA] doesn’t come from songwriters. It comes from the real rule makers—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Spotify. And startups know which side butters their bread.

Public discussion of MMA has focused on the song collective and the compulsory blanket license for songs, but the mandated digital services collective is more troubling given the size of the players involved…Rule taker startups are governed by the rule maker DLC, but have no say in the DLC’s selection.

Like Microsoft’s anonymous amici, startups know their place —especially against Google, Amazon, and Facebook, whose monopoly bear hug on startups includes hosting, advertising and driving traffic.

The MMA authorizes these aggressive incumbents to effectively decide the price to startups for the “modernized” blanket license. Why? Because the MMA requires users of the license to pay for the lion’s share of the “administrative assessment,” the licensees’ collectivized administrative cost payment that the CBO estimates will be over $222 million for eight years….

Why should the government only permit one game in town? Rather than have the DLC run by the usual suspect monopolists, why not allow competition?

This is important–if startups can’t afford to buy-in to the license, it does them no good, and their biggest competitors decide the price of that license through the DLC.…

“Modernization” should make licensing easier: level the playing field for startups and protect them from famously predatory competitor incumbents, as well as copyright infringement lawsuits from the rule takers.

These are all good reasons for the private market solution. Competition at least gives startups hope for the pursuit of fair treatment.

“The parties” and everyone else ignored this warning (and of course, since it wasn’t included in a press release, the trade press did no investigation). This is exactly what Dylan is focused on in DMN. It was only a matter of time until the invoice for startups came due. 

That invoice arrived as part of the “administrative assessment” hearing mandated by Congress in Title I. This is a curious procedure before the Copyright Royalty Judges that expressly excluded anyone from participating who might get in the way of the check that would reunite the Harry Fox Agency with its former owners. That order by the CRJs is the document that Dylan links to.

In a blog post at the time on MTP, Chris drilled down on the nuances of this settlement for the administrative assessment (which is what gives teeth to the mechanism to sandbag startups:

Notice two things:  First, the CRJs’ adopt the position of the MLC and the DLC that the only people who could object to the settlement were “participants”.  Who might that be?  Why the DLC and the MLC, of course.  There were other participants, most prominently the Songwriters Guild of America.  SGA was hounded out of the proceeding because the MLC apparently did not want to include SGA in the negotiation of a settlement.

I can understand the complexity of a three-way negotiation with those pesky songwriters about a matter that affects all the songwriters in the world who have ever written a song or that may ever write a song.  Those songwriters might really get in the way.  What I do not understand, however, is why the songwriters would not be afforded the opportunity to at least comment on the settlement that carries the awesome power of the Leviathan behind it.  I do understand how the rules came to be written the way they are, however.

And this leads to the other thing to observe about this ruling.  “Because there were no non-settling participants…the proposed settlement was unopposed.”  Rather tautological, right?  How can the settlement be opposed if those who might oppose it are not allowed to do so?

Let’s be clear what “opposition” means in this context.  You could just as easily say “improve” or “make fair”.  And lest you think that this is yet another example of sloppy legislative drafting in the mistake-prone Title I, this time I don’t think it’s a mistake.  I think it is exactly what the drafters intended.

This is all pretty darkly typical swampy behavior by the insiders and their lobbyists dedicated to lawyering their way to an unfair court order masquerading as a good thing for songwriters. Of course.

Here’s the ray of sunshine:

After the world “unopposed” the CRJs drop a footnote.  And it is this footnote that is probably the most important point to the unrepresented songwriters and startups who either couldn’t afford to participate or who were afraid of back alley retaliation if they did.

“The Judges have been advised by their staff that some members of the public sent emails to the Copyright Royalty Board seeking to comment on the proposed settlement agreement.Neither the Copyright Act, nor the regulations adopted thereunder, provide for submission or consideration of comments on a proposed settlement by non-participants in an administrative assessment proceeding. Consequently, as a matter of law, the Judges could not, and did not, consider these ex parte communications in deciding whether to approve the proposed settlement. Additionally, the Judges’ non-consideration of these ex parte communications does not: (i) imply any opinion by the Judges as to the substantive merits of any statements contained in such communications; or (ii) reflect any inability of the Judges to question, [on their own motion without a filing from a participant] whether good cause exists to adopt a settlement and to then utilize all express or reasonably implied statutory authority granted to them to make a determination as to the existence…of good cause [to reject the settlement now or in the future].“

This footnote is very, very important.  I would interpret it to mean that the CRJs may anticipate that they are directly or indirectly appealed or their decision is examined by the Congress that has ultimate oversight. 

Note that the Judges clearly anticipate reviewing the assessment for “good cause” without a filling from the DLC or the MLC. It’s not clear exactly how that might happen, but it might be as simple as a startup complaining to the CRJs in an email.

So it seems to us that it’s only an MLC issue in that both the MLC and the DLC are each complicit in keeping outsiders away from the decisions about the administrative assessment and how it will be tagged to startups or smaller services. You know, “the parties” decided how the little people are to make do.

by Trichordist Editor

Chris Castle’s Copyright Office Comments on the Black Box Controversy

Here’s some more MLC news you’ll never read about in the trade press.

Yesterday we posted a shocking revelation from the MediaNet/SOCAN ex parte letter to the Copyright Office: It appears that the digital music services have no intention of complying with the much ballyhooed benefit to the Music Modernization Act–in return for the “reach back” safe harbor that somebody decided to grant the services retroactively, the services would pay over (or you could say “disgorge”) all the unmatched and unpaid mechanical royalties that they were holding, sometimes for years, and always secretly. (Adding insult to injury, MediaNet seems to think that referring to SOCAN’s ownership of MediaNet somehow makes screwing us over into a songwriter-friendly act of good fellowship and felicity. More likely, SOCAN itself knows nothing about it.)

Remember, MediaNet straight up threatened to decline the reach back safe harbor and not pay over the black box. As it turns out, MediaNet’s position is not unique–as Chris Castle identified in his reply comment on the Copyright Office’s black box study, all of the services represented by the DLC made that exact threat to the Copyright Office. As Chris observes, these are not idle threats. They are made by the biggest corporations in commercial history, one of which may be broken up due to antitrust investigations on two continents.

Something must be done and done quickly before the DLC decides to take the blanket license without the limitation on liability for past infringements having successfully scared off anyone who could have sued but didn’t thinking that there was a fixed reach back safe harbor. That seems like it will result in the big guys having paid off the big guys in the NMPA’s secret settlement that was being negotiated simultaneously with the MMA (the NMPA’s umbrella December 17, 2017 Pending and Unmatched Usage Agreement referenced in the MediaNet ex parte letter and talked around in other filings. Remember–the MMA was introduced a few days after the secret NMPA agreement on December 21, 2017 and Wixen Music Publishing felt they had to sue Spotify by December 31, 2017 because of the reach back safe harbor. So everyone except the songwriters–and perhaps most Members of Congress–seems to have known that the fix was in on black box.)

Another fine mess they got us into. Here’s the except from Chris Castle’s reply comment:

The DLC’s Quid Pro Quo Revelation

The concept of a “black box” distribution is a pale mimic of a simple
fact: It is not their money. The fundamental step that Title I excuses
is basic and would solve much of the unmatched problem if Title I did
not exist: Don’t use a work unless you have the rights.

It is a fundamental aspect of copyright licensing and it is not metaphysical.
Yet the message from all negotiators concerned in this process seems
to shelter legitimacy in a complication of dangers to the black box that
come down to another simple fact: Obey and be quick about it or the
law will take your money and give it to someone else.

How much is in the black box? They won’t tell you. From where? Not
your business. From when? Confidential. Is it yours? Already paid it
to someone else before you even knew it was there. And Lord knows
that money once taken incorrectly in the dark is unlikely to be paid
correctly in the light.

Comments by the DLC demonstrate conclusively that addressing the
black box has taken on even greater urgency. The DLC’s Initial
Comment in a related docket is unusually revelatory for a group with a
multitrillion dollar market capitalization that loves them some
protective orders. This passage is particularly breathtaking:

This was the heart of the deal struck by the stakeholders in
crafting the MMA: to provide legal certainty for DMPs, through
a limitation on liability, in exchange for the transfer of accrued
royalties.

If that were “the deal” it is news to me, and I like to think that I’ve
been reading along at home pretty attentively. If I wasn’t aware of
“the deal”, I’m sure I wasn’t alone in my ignorance, but I’m far more
understanding of why the negotiators would have been motivated to
keep “the deal” under wraps if that’s really what it was.

If “the deal” wasn’t kept quiet, someone might have asked why there
was a “deal” when the services were simply agreeing to pay money
they already owed and that they were already obligated to pay for infringements that already occurred. Yet, services still got the new
safe harbor trophy to put on the wall in the copyright hunting lodge
next to the DMCA and Section 230.

The gall doesn’t end there, however. The DLC goes on to make this
threat of imminent harm:

[The “deal”] is a crucial point for the Office to keep in mind as it
crafts rules in this space. If the regulations make it less likely
that a DMP will be able to rely on that liability protection when
it needs it—i.e., if it increases the risk that a court would deem a
DMP to not have complied with the requirements in section
115(d)(10)—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.

It is a bit odd that the DLC seems to think of Title I as their private
contract, but there it is. The DLC members’ anticipatory repudiation
of the purported deal that the world now knows underpins Title I was
both refreshingly brazen and starkly shocking. Given that the Eight
Mile Style case against DLC member Spotify (and both Spotify and
The MLC’s vendor the Harry Fox Agency) is a live action, the DLC is
not making an idle threat. The DLC tells us that if its market cap isn’t quite high enough to suit, Spotify could immediately dip into the black
box for “money to use in defending itself.”

The relationship with the services apparently has settled into the
customary laying about with threats and blackguarding both
songwriters and the Copyright Office. That’s reassuring in confirming
that human nature hasn’t actually changed and these companies really
were the Data Lords we had always known our betters to be after all,
sure as boots.17 Maybe one day the scorpion really won’t sting the frog.
Maybe another “unity dinner” is in order. But not today.

Regardless, it is clear that the Copyright Office is almost the only place
that songwriters can go for relief and an explanation of how the MMA
is to be implemented whatever secret deal the DLC now purports to
have made. Given the DLC’s unequivocal threat on behalf of its
members, there is no doubt of the imminent danger that the black
box currently being held is about to vanish into thin air if something
isn’t done immediately to preserve the status quo. The balance of
hardships pretty clearly tilts in favor of the songwriters as the safe
harbor services control the money and always have.

by thetrichordist

MediaNet Trying to Cut Off Black Box Payments

You can’t say these people aren’t cagey. Remember that one of the big selling points for the Music Modernization Act was that in return for the under-reported reach back safe harbor, songwriters would get paid on “black box” income by each digital music service dating back to the inception of each service. This is what the Copyright Office wants, too, unsurprisingly since that was the deal.

The reach back safe harbor was used as a scare tactic to keep songwriters from filing infringement lawsuits against these services and the MMA’s promoters went right along with it.

But–now that the bill is about to come due, guess who wants to change the deal? Services are beginning to threaten to decline the reach back safe harbor (and with it the blanket license, presumably) if they have to treat songwriters fairly on the black box. Instead of the MMA free ride that was handed to them on a silver platter, they now want to leverage the scare tactic and run out the clock on the statute of limitations that they will no doubt say had been running. That way they’d create their own safe harbor and never pay the black box but still try to use the blanket license.

So everyone should sue all of these loathsome people today and toll that statute. If enough of these services want to play hardball, there’s a real question of why bother having the blanket license at all.

Here’s an excerpt from MediaNet’s “ex parte” letter posted today:

We understand that the Office is contemplating that the cumulative report will provide data on unmatched usage back to the launch of the service. MediaNet, however, launched its service nearly 20 years ago. In light of that, and the change in vendors, we are requesting the Office adopt a narrow exception in the cumulative reporting regulations. We think such a regulation would be consistent with the overall statutory scheme. Notably, the statute references reporting pursuant to the “applicable regulations,” when discussing the information that must be provided to the MLC. That is a reference to the pre-existing reporting regulations. Significantly, those regulations provided that documentation related to royalties and usage for a particular period of time needed to be preserved only for a period of five years.

To be clear, MediaNet is not asking the Office adopt a regulation that allows a digital music provider to exclude all data from periods of time more than five years prior to license availability date (though such a rule would be consistent with the statute). Instead it is seeking a narrower provision that will provides all available data to the MLC. This would be in the form of a new paragraph in 37 C.F.R. § 210.20(c)(4) of the proposed rule:

(iii) The digital music provider shall be excused from providing the information set forth in paragraphs (i) and (ii) where the usage is from a period of time more than five years prior to license availability date, and the digital music provider certifies the following: that the information was solely held by a vendor with whom the digital music provider no longer has a business relationship, the digital music provider has requested that information from such vendor, and the vendor has informed the digital music provider that it cannot or will not provide that information.

Absent this narrow exception, MediaNet may decline to take advantage of the limitation on liability, which may deprive copyright owners of additional accrued royalties.

by thetrichordist

SoundExchange Comment on The MLC’s Public Database

[One of the problems that The MLC will encounter is matching songs to transaction data from the “safe harbor services” using the blanket licenses and enjoying the reach back safe harbor giveaway in the Music Modernization Act. There are different ways to do this, but it appears that The MLC wants to gather sound recording metadata (like the ISRC unique identifiers) and then map the songs to the sound recordings based on sound recording information from the services. This is hardly an authoritative basis to determine sound recordings, but that appears to be what The MLC intends to do. SoundExchange is the authoritative source for this information and they’ve been assembling that data for many, many years. This except from SoundExchange’s comment to the Copyright Office sheds light on the issues. Again, you’ll rarely find any of the issues in these Copyright Office comments discussed in the trade press unless someone like The MLC issues a press release. It’s also worth noting that The MLC has merely stated that The MLC “agrees that the data in the public MLC musical
works database is not owned by the MLC or its vendor.” First, “data” is not the same as a “database”. We want to find out if there is any difference between disclaiming ownership of individual data and claiming ownership of the database as a whole. But second, there’s no proof yet that The MLC’s current “data quality initiative” does not simply update the database of The MLC’s vendor, HFA.]

Read the entire SoundExchange comment here.

SoundExchange appreciates the inclusion in Section 210.31(h) of the Office’s proposed regulations the requirement that MLC Database include a “conspicuous” disclaimer that states that the database is not an authoritative source for sound recording information. It appears that the
MLC has decided to populate the MLC Database with sound recording identifying information sourced from usage data provided by digital music providers (rather than authoritative sources such as rights owners). SoundExchange believes this decision will result in the MLC Database being chock-full of redundant records variously misidentifying a large number of sound recordings.

Nonetheless, SoundExchange also recognizes that the MLC needs to launch its business on a tight timetable, and that the Office has sought to mitigate the issue through other provisions such as the requirement to provide data provenance. However, the MLC’s decision makes it critically important the MLC’s disclaimer concerning sound recording information be clear and prominent, and perhaps linked to a more detailed explanation of the issue, because this design decision carries a significant risk of confusing the public, which needs to understand what the MLC Database is and what it is not….

[I]t is critical that the MLC Database be easily accessible to all other
industry participants, so others can build on the MLC Database to create value-added resources for the industry. For example, while the MLC’s reluctance to include and organize its data around authoritative sound recording information may make sense given practical constraints, it represents a missed opportunity to develop a resource with authoritative linkages between sound recordings and musical works that would be of significantly greater value for participants in the ecosystem. Fortunately, the statutory requirement that the MLC make its data available to others provides an opportunity for third parties to fill that void. This kind of function depends on API access to the MLC Database.

by Trichordist Editor

@CISACnews and BIEM’s Copyright Office Comments on the MLC

[Songwriters outside the United States should pay close attention to the disconnect between their CMOs and the MLC. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that The MLC is very US-centric and at that very Anglo-American centric in its myopia. We haven’t done a point by point comparison, but we have posted CISAC and BIEM’s comments in the past and we can’t help noticing that their current comment has a few references to prior comments that seem to have been largely ignored. They are very polite about it (maybe too polite about it) but the consequences of ignoring the CMOs is that any ex-US songwriter whose songs are exploited in the US and who relies on their CMO to collect their US earnings may find their streaming mechanicals reduced to zero after 1/1/21 if the HFA database that The MLC is using is not properly mapped.

The MLC’s continued disregard for CMOs is puzzling unless you think perhaps that The MLC doesn’t think CMOs will continue to play a role in the international copyright system. Whatever The MLC’s long-term goals, it is clear that the Music Modernization Act was drafted from an entirely US-centric point of view and that the concerns of our international partners were never taken into account while at the same time forcing them to accept the MMA’s terms. Another example of the haphazard approach that is rapidly becoming the hallmark of the MMA.]

Read the entire comment here.

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (“CISAC”) and the International Organisation representing Mechanical Rights Societies (“BIEM”) would like to thank the U.S. Copyright Office (“the Office”) for the opportunity to provide comments on the Proposed Rulemaking on the Public Musical Works Database (“Database”) and Transparency of the Mechanical Licensing Collective (“MLC”). This submission follows our previous comments to the Office, in particular on the Notifications of Inquiry from September 2019 and April 2020 (SG19-1116; SG19-1284; SG20-0614).

As already explained in previous submissions, CISAC and BIEM are international organisations representing Collective Management Organisations (“CMOs”) worldwide that are entrusted with the management of creators’ rights and, as such, have a direct interest in the Regulations governing the functioning of the Database and the transparency of MLC’s operations. CISAC and BIEM would like to thank the Office for highlighting the existence and particularity of entities such as CMOs that are not referred to in the MMA (page 58175 of the Proposed Rulemaking1) and should be treated equally.

CISAC and BIEM are grateful that some of their comments were taken into account by the Office in the Proposed Rulemaking, but would like to reiterate their concerns on certain provisions which, if not adequately addressed, may affect the administration of rights of foreign rightsholders in the US, as follows…

A/ Copyright ownership information and shares

As part of the list of mandatory information for matched works, the Office lists “the copyright owner of the musical work (or share thereof), and the ownership percentage of that owner” (for unmatched works, it is the same as long as the owner has been identified but not located).

For the sake of clarity, we reiterate the need to have CMOs clearly recognized as “copyright owners” under the provisions of the Proposed Rulemaking. Indeed, as already explained in several of our previous submissions, outside the U.S., the “copyright ownership” of the work is attributed to the CMOs managing the mechanical rights of the so-called BIEM repertoire. This would mean that the “copyright owner” share as defined in the Proposed Rulemaking should refer specifically to the share controlled by the CMO as administrator of the work, as opposed to the actual composer/songwriter share.

This clarification also has direct consequences with respect to the determination of sensitive and confidential information which cannot be made publicly accessible through the Database, as further argued in CISAC and BIEM’s comments to the Proposed Rulemaking on Treatment of Confidential Information (see SG20-0562).

If, however, it is considered indispensable for the DMPs and the MLC to have creators’ information and percentage shares for identification and distribution purposes, such data should not be disclosed to third-party entities or made publicly accessible in the Database for the reasons stated in our previous submission. In particular, in the 28 May 2020 comments to the Proposed Rulemaking on Treatment of Confidential Information submitted to the Office,2 CISAC and BIEM explained that there seemed to be no business need to include the creator percentage shares in the musical works, as this information was not required to license or distribute musical works, and constitutes particularly sensitive and confidential financial and business information for creators and their representatives.

Personal identifiable information

CISAC and BIEM fully agrees with the Office with regards to the withdrawal of the date of birth from the list of mandatory public information to be included in the Database. However, CISAC and BIEM continue to be very much concerned with the general compliance of MLC’s operations, including the Database, with data protection laws. As for now, the Proposed Rulemakings are silent on this, although this is a key issue for CMOs worldwide and probably also for other rightsholders.

CISAC and BIEM thus respectfully suggest that the Regulations include clear language on the MLC’s full compliance with data protection laws, and in particular with the European General Data Protection Regulation, as the MLC will process personal data of EU creators. This means that the Database shall be construed in compliance with the GDPR requirements from the building-up of the system (i.e. privacy by design) until the processing operations, providing the requisite security guarantees.

Point of contact for inquiries and Complaints

CISAC and BIEM welcome the inclusion of the need for the MLC to provide a point of contact for inquiries or Complaints. However, as requested in our submission SG20-0614, the Proposed Rulemaking should go further and also make mandatory the publication of the rules that will be applied by the MLC’s dispute resolution committee. This will help to streamline and give more transparency to the dispute resolution process, which will benefit both copyright owners and DMPs.

by thetrichordist

Future of Music Coalition Warns Against Vendor Lock-in in Copyright Office Comments

[The Future of Music Coalition joins the chorus of concern about shenanigans at The MLC, Inc. with special access and treatment of its vendors regarding the “public” database. As others have pointed out, there’s a real question as to whether The MLC, Inc. is actually building its own database or is just building up the data muscle of its vendor the Harry Fox Agency (formerly owned by MLC promoter and nonvoting board member NMPA. The MLC is prohibited by law from licensing other than the narrow window of streaming mechanicals, but HFA is not.]

[I]t’s important that MLC’s chosen vendors not be able to leverage their
status with the MLC to advantage themselves in other business activities not covered under the MMA. If a vendor was able to leverage its status with MLC to the detriment of competitors in other kinds of licensing activity (even informally), that wouldn’t serve competition, consumers, or creators. Additionally, the Office needs to ensure that provisions about database vendors being replaceable are meaningful.

We see no reason to expect that the MLC’s chosen vendors aren’t up to the task, but songwriters and composers need assurance that if a vendor ends up having problems and a change is necessary, that change will really be possible.

The Office can require the MLC to disclose what it is doing to prevent any vendor from being too operationally enmeshed with the MLC that it either enjoys an unfair advantage through that relationship, or that it would be practically impossible for another vendor to step in.

Read the entire post here.

by thetrichordist

Songwriters Guild and Society of Composers & Lyricists Copyright Office Comments on Database Ownership and Songwriter Credit in Public Database

[The Songwriters Guild of America and the Society of Composers & Lyricists filed a joint comment with the Copyright Office on proposed rules implementing the public database that The MLC, Inc. is charged with stewarding. They raise a host of issues, but also focus on the ownership issue raised by the Alliance of Recorded Music and the songwriter credit issue raised by Kerry Muzzey.]

Ownership of the Musical Works Database

As to the issue of “ownership” of the Musical Works Database, SGA and SCL were gratified by the USCO’s clear statement quoting the MMA that:
[w]hile the mechanical licensing collective must ‘establish and maintain a database containing information relating to musical works,’ the statute and legislative history emphasize that the database is meant to benefit the music industry overall and is not ‘owned’ by the collective itself. Under the statute, if the Copyright Office designates a new entity to be the mechanical licensing collective, the Office must ‘adopt regulations to govern the transfer of licenses, funds, records, data, and administrative responsibilities from the existing mechanical licensing collective to the public, either for free or at marginal cost, pursuant to the MMA.’

Nevertheless, we feel compelled to repeat once again the admonitions voiced by attorney Christian Castle in his recent submission to the USCO concerning practical issues, problems and anomalies that have arisen even prior to the commencement date of MLC public operations concerning the construction of the Musical Works Database:

I believe that The MLC is encouraging songwriters to correct their song data in the HFA database and that no data from HFA has been transferred to The MLC as yet, and may never be. If The MLC is having data corrected and filled out in the HFA database, then the rules applicable to vendor access to the database may not apply because the Congress’s musical works database is not actually being created at The MLC, it’s being created at HFA. Time will tell if I am correct about this, but it does seem that if I am correct, then The MLC and HFA are working together to exploit an imagined loophole in Title I that violates Congressional intent and certainly the spirit of MMA. Respectfully, the Office should find out what is going on.3

SGA and SCL believe that these are important questions of fact that require answers to ensure that data ownership issues are as clearly defined as possible in advance of any conflicts that may arise. Clarifying that (i) all data and corrections made through HFA will be mirrored in the Musical Works Database in real time, and (ii) that being compelled to provide data to HFA under color of authority from Title I does not constitute a license to HFA for any other purpose, will be important steps forward.

As we have also previously stated, the contractual role and authority of HFA (or any other vendor) should be subject to transparent scrutiny by all interested parties, includingthe music creators whose works are the subject of all information that resides in the database. That includes examination of the contractual rights of the vendor in regard to the data flowing through its own systems and/or those of the MLC, the ancillary vendor use rights (if any) of such data during both the pendency and post-expiration/termination periods of such contract(s), and the clarity of rights ownership of data by the MLC and successor iterations of the MLC (including as regards the Musical Works Database). We respectfully call on the USCO to address more robustly these important issues of transparency and data ownership, and ignore unsupported assertions that transparency and scrutiny of vendor relationships will invite inefficiencies as opposed to clarity and competition.

Songwriter and Composer Names in the Public Musical Works Database

As the USCO is aware and has recognized, SGA and SCL have been consistently outspoken concerning the fact that out of all pertinent identifiers for musical compositions, the names of the music creators of a work are among the only constant and unique data points. In all but the rarest of circumstances, such information is never subject to change, and therefore one of the most important and reliable elements necessary for accurate identification and matching of works.

Moreover, the extension of proper credit to human creators as part of this crucially important Musical Works Database –rather than simply limiting identifiers to the names of corporate assignees of rights which are frequently subject to change and termination– is both appropriate and essential to the fulfillment of the ideals and underpinnings of the MMA set forth in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. As that section makes clear, copyright protections are first and foremost meant to serve the interests of the creators and the public, not the corporate entities that serve in an instrumental but secondary role as rights administrators.

We have therefore remained completely at a loss to understand why this crucial category of information was omitted from the MMA as a specifically required identifier (and why the music publishing community for some reason failed to support our efforts to correct that oversight), and are especially thankful that the USCO has put forth a proposed rule

that requires the MLC to include songwriter and composer information in the database. SGA and SCL continue to remain disquieted, however, with the additional qualifier added by the USCO concerning the standard to be applied by the MLC in seeking music creator data: “to the extent reasonably available to the collective.” Such a limited standard serves to diminish the requisite and explicit value of songwriter/composer identifying information.

We respectfully believe that music creator information should be more clearly defined as a mandatory data point required to be pursued for inclusion in the database by the MLC with vigor, and suggest once again that the rulemaking more specifically reflect the imperative nature of this duty. A more appropriate standard would be, in our view: “to the extent available to the collective through its best efforts to secure such data.” The avoidance of creating loopholes that may permit music publishers to omit music creator information from the data they voluntarily provide to the MLC is essential, and the independent community of songwriters and composers continues to seek the assistance of the USCO in this regard.

In respect to the foregoing, we desire to make clear that SGA and SCL also continue to support the rights of those music creators who may wish not to be publicly associated with certain musical works. That is and must continue to be right of any songwriter or composer. We therefore support the proposed rule put forth by the USCO that grants the MLC discretion to allow music creators the option of having songwriter/composer information listed anonymously or pseudonymously. We would, however, prefer that such a regulation be extended into a mandatory direction to the MLC to accept such direction from a music creator.

Read the whole comment here.

by thetrichordist

Copyright Office Comments by Composer @KerryMuzzey: Include Songwriter Credits in MLC Database

[Kerry Muzzey is an independent classical and film composer and artist rights advocate. In his comment to the Copyright Office on the MLC regulations he asks why songwriter names are not required to be included in the public database currently being stewarded by The MLC, Inc. Including songwriter names in the database seems like a fundamental building block of identifying a song–assuming that’s what you want to do. It would be like SoundExchange reporting not including an artist name in the transaction data. It makes no sense. Yet, it’s an issue as we will see.]

My name is Kerry Muzzey. I am an independent classical and film composer, and am self-published. It is crucial that the MLC database be searchable and completely public-facing, not only by song title but by writer’s name and publishing entity name or by ISWC or BMI/ASCAP IPI/CAE. Independent artists and music publishers must have the ability to search the “black box” of royalty collection, not only for unpaid royalties, but for accrued royalties that appear under a misspelling of an individual’s name, publishing entity, or in the event that a similar song title has resulted in the misattribution of the writer/publisher credit to another writer/publisher or artist. This transparency is essential not only for accurate accounting of royalties for an individual, but also for any works that are co-written, have multiple publishers, and/or whose performance rights are represented by multiple PROs. Any composer, songwriter or music publisher should have the ability to “disambiguate” their works from any other similar- or matching-title works or similar or identical writer names, by a simple error submission/correction process (after completing any necessary verification of identity). 

Read the entire comment here.

by thetrichordist

The MLC Posts its By Laws

The MLC finally posted its “by-laws” that gives some insight into its operations. For a non-profit like The MLC, Inc., the by laws are essentially the operating rules of the corporation.

Typically, a non profit’s by laws cover issues like the purpose of the organization, the location of offices, the general governing structure, the number of governing members (like the board of directors) and the process for the selection, election and removal of members, terms of service for governing members, qualifications for those serving to govern the organization, methods of conducting business and organizational policy statements, meeting times and dates (usually a minimum of annually), limitations of the organization and its governing body and its fiscal year (for accounting and reporting this has to be a twelve month period).

The MLC’s by laws have all these typical components, but also have an acknowledgement of the oversight role of the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress as required by Title I of the Music Modernization Act.

One thing is a bit unusual about The MLC’s by laws given that it was sold to songwriters by the NMPA on the basis that “the services pay for everything” is the broad indemnification clause in Article VIII of the by laws. What this means is that The MLC is going to cover the costs if any “Person” gets sued or criminally prosecuted:

Neither the Members nor any Director of the Collective shall be personally responsible for monetary damages for any action taken, or any failure to take any action, provided however, that this provision shall not eliminate or limit the liability of any Member or Director to the extent that such elimination or limitation of liability is expressly prohibited by applicable law, as in effect at the time of the alleged action or failure to take action by such Member or Director.

The Collective shall indemnify any Person who was or is a party or is threatened to be made a party to any threatened, pending or completed action, suit or proceeding, whether civil, criminal, administrative or investigative by reason of the fact that such Person is or was a Director or Officer of the Collective, or is or was serving any other corporation or any partnership, joint venture, trust or other enterprise, in any capacity at the request of the Collective, [that means HFA] to the fullest extent and in the manner set forth in and permitted by the DGCL, as from time to time in effect. Such right of indemnification shall not be deemed exclusive of any other rights to which such Director or Officer may be entitled apart from the foregoing provisions.

(b) The Collective shall pay expenses (including attorneys’ fees) incurred by a Director or Officer of the Collective referred to in Section 8.4(a) of this Article VIII in defending or appearing as a witness in any civil or criminal action, suit or proceeding described in Section 8.4(a) of this Article VIII in advance of the final disposition of such action, suit or proceeding. The expenses incurred by such Director or Officer shall be paid by the Collective in advance of the final disposition of such action, suit or proceeding only upon receipt of an undertaking by or on behalf of such Director or Officer to repay all amounts advanced if it shall ultimately be determined that the Director or Officer is not entitled to be indemnified by the Collective (which undertaking need not be further secured).

Wonder where that money is going to come from?

by thetrichordist