In a rare treat, Abby North and Chris Castle got to speak with New Orleans attorney Tim Kappel about his client’s case Vetter v. Resnick. The landmark case stands for winning the long-fought principle that termination rights in copyright cause the transfer of the worldwide copyright not just US rights as had been the business practice. The case is a major victory for songwriters and their heirs.
Cyril Vetter and Don Smith co-wrote the song “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” in 1962. They assigned all their interests in the song to Windsong Music Publishers. Vetter later served a termination notice on Resnick to recapture his rights under the U.S. Copyright Act, arguing that this termination applied globally, not just in the U.S. Resnick rejected Vetter’s global termination and Vetter sued for declaratory relief in the Middle District of Louisiana.
In a major win for songwriters and their heirs, Chief District Judge Shelly D. Dick agreed with Vetter, granting him worldwide rights to the song, which contradicted established but inequitable business practices in the U.S. music publishing industry. In the podcast, Chris Castle and Abby North discuss the case with Vetter’s attorney, Tim Kappel. These documents are referenced in the podcast.
The Government has been defeated in the Lords over measures to protect creatives from having their copyrighted work used to train AI models without permission or remuneration. [The House of Lords is the “upper chamber” of the UK Parliament, similar to the US Senate.]
Peers [Members of the House of Lords] voted 145 to 126, majority 19, in favour of a package of amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill aiming to tackle the unauthorised use of intellectual property by big tech companies scraping data for AI.
Proposing the amendments, digital rights campaigner Baroness Kidron said they would help enforce existing property rights by improving transparency and laying out a redress procedure.
The measures would explicitly subject AI companies to UK copyright law, regardless of where they are based, reveal the names and owners of web crawlers that currently operate anonymously and allow copyright owners to know when, where and how their work is used.
The MLC, Inc. has to disclose its “highest compensated” employees on its nonprofit Form 990 tax return for 2023. The Copyright Office was supposed to be reviewing public comments on whether the MLC, Inc. should be renewed for another five years or if the party is over. That review has been going on for a year now, maybe they forgot? The party is obviously still going strong.
Let’s be honest–it may look like things are getting weird with TikTok and Bytedance, but let me suggest things are maybe even weirder than they appear. New information has come to light.
First of all, I think it’s clear that at least as of January 19, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will make it unlawful for companies in the United States to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update the social media platform TikTok, unless U. S. operation of the platform is severed from Chinese control which basically means owned by Bytedance. It’s potentially clear–although the situation is changing daily in Trump time–that the statute may also ban a number of other data-scraping apps owned and distributed by Bytedance that have problems and addictive properties similar to TikTok.
After TikTok’s faux shut down, President Trump immediately got into the act to “Save TikTok”. His first move was to post on social media that he would issue an executive order today “delaying” the effectiveness of the Act. Mr. Trump’s statements may have seemed a bit disjointed because from a statutory point of view, the President does not have the authority to “delay” the effectiveness of the Act. In fact, that is exactly what the Supreme Court just refused to do.
But “Saving TikTok” may not mean saving TikTok if you catch my drift. Saving it for whom exactly?
This may all seem rather bizarre, but if you read President Trump’s “Friend of the Court” brief filed during the Supreme Court’s review of TikTok’s request for a delay in enforcing the Act, it would all be clear–maybe–because that is exactly what he asked the Supreme Court to do–delay the effective date so the could apply Art of the Deal principles to the situation. This is, of course, not what the Supreme Court really is about, but it does reveal what was on his mind. The President says:
In light of this Court’s well-placed concerns about the “highly expedited” resolution of novel, difficult, and “very significant” constitutional questions…the Court should consider staying the statutory deadline for divestment and taking time to consider the merits in the ordinary course. Such an approach would allow this Court more breathing space to consider the merits, and it would also allow President Trump’s Administration the opportunity to pursue a negotiated resolution that, if successful, would obviate the need for this Court to decide these questions.
When a statute has been duly passed by Congress and signed into law by the then-sitting President (Biden) and upheld by the Supreme Court, the next President as chief magistrate must likely enforce the law under the “Take Care” clause of the Constitution (“take care that the laws be faithfully executed” in Article II, Section 3 for those reading along at home).
Of late there has, of course, been an unfortunate reliance on what I think is a misinterpretation of “prosecutorial discretion” that I personally find loathsome and flat out wrong. Prosecutorial discretion historically has been decisions based on resources and the strength of the evidence in particular cases; doing otherwise often results in the prosecutor getting unelected (see, e.g., Chesa Boudin and George Gascon). We’ll see if this dubious practice will continue.
Without getting into the entire history of executive orders that exceed presidential authority, there isn’t a clear precedent for a presidential executive order actually limiting the enforcement of an act of Congress that has been upheld by the Supreme Court (like the TikTok divestment). One notable and frequently cited case is Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), where the Supreme Court struck down then-President Harry Truman’s executive order to seize control of steel mills during the Korean War. The Court ruled that President Truman lacked the constitutional or statutory authority to issue such an order in a somewhat but not entirely similar situation to TikTok. In general, executive orders are subject to judicial review, and it is pretty old news that the Supreme Court has the power to strike down executive actions that exceed presidential authority or violate the Constitution. That principle of US law was established in 1803 by our first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Having said that, I do understand why President Trump is trolling TikTok, or at least I think I do today. As he said in a speech to his supporters regarding a solution for TikTok’s problem (and has repeated a number of times since his inauguration):
So I said very simply, a joint venture. So, if TikTok is worth nothing, zero without an approval, you know you don’t approve, they’re out of business, they’re worth nothing.
If you do approve, they’re worth like a trillion dollars, they’re worth some crazy number. So I said, I’ll approve, but let the United States of America own 50% of TikTok. I’m approving on behalf of the United States.
So they’ll have a partner, the United States, and they’ll have a lot of bidders and the United States will do what we call a joint venture. And there’s no risk, we’re not putting up any money. All we’re doing is giving them the approval without which they don’t have anything.
As I’ve said before, President Trump has all the leverage that anyone could have in a situation where the Chinese Communist Party has their eye fixed on an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. Not to be conspiratorial, but I do find it interesting that shortly before the Supreme Court decision, Softbank’s CEO committed to investing $100 billion in the US–Softbank being a major investor in TikTok and a beneficiary of that IPO and the same CEO just committed a portion of $500 billion to the Stargate AI infrastructure investment alongside Oracle and OpenAI.
I do think that someone might challenge any executive order that is inconsistent with the Truman precedent in the Youngstown Supreme Court case. The Supreme Court could probably strike down such an executive order. In the meantime, President Trump will likely be trying to close a deal to sell TikTok and destroy the CCP’s connection to user data. At some point, Congress may have to get involved again to bless whatever the final deal is.
So could Trump pull this off? Oh, yes, he could. It would be unusual, but not impossible in my judgement. Murky, yes. But when the dust settles, it looks like TikTok doesn’t have much of a choice. They will either hand over 50% of its company to the US (either in the form of voting power (like “golden shares“), stock or a financial interest), or they can shut down. And it may not just be TikTok–it may be all of the Bytedance companies that have a TikTok problem. Even though giving up a 50% share would essentially cut in half any ownership stake of Softbank, there may be some tolerance given that the alternative is zero–not just for TikTok, by the way, but potentially all of the Bytedance companies.
Is giving up 50% of your company because your lawyers and lobbyists failed a happy thing? Do you think Xi Jinping is in the habit of giving a hug when someone he’s paid a fortune to fails miserably? Not really. I would not want to be the food taster for TikTok’s head lobbyists.
Of course, the US should not take on any of TikTok’s obligations or litigation, such as the Multidistrict Social Media Addiction Litigation which potentially has massive liabilities for TikTok. TikTok’s benefit from social media addiction should not be lost on anyone given the user reaction that TikTok has riled up. Social media addiction is a real thing.
Stay tuned, we’ll see what happens. Whatever happens, it won’t change the fact that TikTok pays garbage royalties if they pay at all.
As you probably already know, the statutory mechanical royalty rate for physical or downloads (not streaming) has increased as of January 1, 2025. This means that all floating rate licenses (e.g., not subject to controlled comp rates) should have increased as of January 1, 2025 from 12.4¢ to 12.7¢ due to the Phonorecords IV cost of living adjustment. (And of course should have increased in prior PR IV years in 24.). And of course we have Trichordist readers to thank for helping to persuade the Copyright Royalty Judges to reject the Phonorecords IV frozen mechanical rate settlement that led to the labels agreeing to an increase from 9.1¢ to 12¢ plus a cost of living adjustment on physical and downloads that rose to 12.4¢ in 2024 and now to 12.7¢ in 2025. (But remember there is no cost of living adjustment for streaming mechanicals like Spotify.)
It’s probably just a glitch, but I understand that HFA hasn’t updated the 1/1/25 rates yet for “licensing out” in at least one instance (see screen capture below obtained this week). I’m inclined to believe that the issue is with the database and would not be a one-off, but I could be wrong. That suggests to me that every songwriter and publisher with either a newly issued license since 1/1/25 or a floating rate license in place during PR IV rate period (2023-2027) should probably confirm that the respective COLA escalations have been properly applied as of January 1 of 2024 and 2025. I would imagine that this isn’t an isolated incident, but maybe it is. No reason to let grass grow, however.
Here’s the Copyright Royalty Board’s timely notice of the new rate effective 1/1/25–which means that the HFA system does not appear to have been updated unless the screen capture reflects a one-off which seems doubtful to me.
And for reference, this is the rate for 2024 with the COLA adjustment that may also have been misapplied–everyone would have to check to know if it was misapplied to them.
If you’re affected by the Los Angeles fires, you may want to determine if you are eligible for funding by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Hypebot has a handy page devoted to resources for those affected by the fires that you can access here.
It’s always a good idea to let FEMA tell you what the current rules are that apply to your particular situation as these may change. The basic rules are available on the FEMA website and are quite extensive. You can access the FEMA rules on FEMA’s website here. This falls under the general heading of “eligibility requirements for FEMA assistance”. This post is not meant to be legal advice, just a heads up about some of the bureaucracy involved with disaster relief.
Some of this involves proving who you are, your citizenship status, residence and a few other things. FEMA lists the kinds of documents they accept to prove eligibility. As these are also the kinds of documents that may get lost in a rushed exit from your residence in the face of a fire or were stored in bank safe deposit box in a bank that burned down, consider how you are going to get these documents together. If you have been blessed enough not to have been affected by the fires, consider organizing these documents in an cloud based or paper folder that you can grab in a hurry or access online at any time (or both).
Sometimes you may be eligible for a crowd funded charitable source of money like gofundme. Realize that this very likely has to be disclosed to FEMA and is addressed in their online FAQ:
When individuals apply for federal emergency aid through FEMA, FEMA assesses their needs and what aid they have already received from other sources. This includes any funds raised through platforms like GoFundMe.
Here’s how it generally works:
Duplication of Benefits: FEMA’s assistance is designed to help individuals and communities recover from disasters, and it cannot duplicate the benefits received from other sources. If fire victims receive aid through GoFundMe or other donations for the same expenses FEMA would cover (like home repairs, temporary housing, medical expenses, etc.), those funds might be counted against the federal assistance they’re eligible for.
Transparency and Documentation: When applying for federal aid, it’s crucial for individuals to be transparent about all the financial assistance they have received. FEMA will require documentation of all income sources, including any funds from GoFundMe.
Types of Assistance: While GoFundMe can provide immediate relief for specific needs, FEMA assistance covers a broader range of recovery efforts. It’s important to understand that FEMA provides different types of aid which might not be addressed by GoFundMe campaigns, such as grants for rebuilding and repair, rental assistance, and other necessary expenses not covered by insurance.
To sum it up:
Setting up a GoFundMe page doesn’t automatically disqualify fire victims from FEMA aid.
It’s important to disclose all received funds when applying for federal assistance to avoid duplication of benefits.
GoFundMe donations might affect the amount of federal aid provided, depending on the use of the funds.
It may help to state that a GoFundMe is to cover items not covered by FEMA with the understanding that you will likely have the need before you get approved by FEMA, and the GoFundMe monies may be available sooner than the FEMA monies. There will likely be a true up between the two at some point.
An important position paper from the Federal Trade Commission about AI:
You may have heard that “data is the new oil”—in other words, data is the critical raw material that drives innovation in tech and business, and like oil, it must be collected at a massive scale and then refined in order to be useful. And there is perhaps no data refinery as large-capacity and as data-hungry as AI.
Companies developing AI products, as we have noted, possess a continuous appetite for more and newer data, and they may find that the readiest source of crude data are their own userbases. But many of these companies also have privacy and data security policies in place to protect users’ information. These companies now face a potential conflict of interest: they have powerful business incentives to turn the abundant flow of user data into more fuel for their AI products, but they also have existing commitments to protect their users’ privacy….
It may be unfair or deceptive for a company to adopt more permissive data practices—for example, to start sharing consumers’ data with third parties or using that data for AI training—and to only inform consumers of this change through a surreptitious, retroactive amendment to its terms of service or privacy policy. (emphasis in original)…
The FTC will continue to bring actions against companies that engage in unfair or deceptive practices—including those that try to switch up the “rules of the game” on consumers by surreptitiously re-writing their privacy policies or terms of service to allow themselves free rein to use consumer data for product development. Ultimately, there’s nothing intelligent about obtaining artificial consent.
The Trichordist 
You must be logged in to post a comment.