Judge Rules Against Sirius XM On Pre-1972 Recordings

from the this-could-be-quite-a-mess dept

Last year, we wrote about the growing list of lawsuits against Sirius XM concerning the legal rights over pre-1972 recordings. As we've discussed, pre-1972 sound recordings are not under federal copyright law (for historical reasons too convoluted to go into now), but are covered under a hodgepodge of messy state copyright laws. Historically, those state laws have been focused on reproduction and distribution and not public performance. Furthermore, terrestrial radio stations have always been allowed to broadcast music without paying performance royalties (though they do pay songwriters/publishers). Post-1972 recordings can be streamed at statutory rates for non-interactive streaming (interactive streaming is a whole different game). It's a bit of a mess, but based on all of this Sirius XM (and Pandora and others) felt fairly confident that they did not have to separately license public performance rights for pre-1972 recordings. There had been no issue about this at all, until the lawsuits started flooding in last year.

And, in a ruling this week, the judge has... ruled against Sirius XM in a manner that may force Sirius and Pandora to eventually have to pay out big. This lawsuit was the first one against Sirius, filed by Flo & Eddie, claiming that their California state copyrights were violated. The court basically found that, because California copyright law says that the copyright holder has "exclusive ownership" of the copyright, that includes public performance rights, despite no further explanation in the law designating that as an exclusive right under California's copyright.

In short, the judge takes a very expansive "property rights" view of the situation, and assumes that California's copyright law basically restricts everything.

Commonly, to have “exclusive ownership” in something is to possess and control it and to not share that right to possess and control with others. See THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 619, 1260 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 5th ed. 2011) (defining “exclusive” and “ownership”). The California legislature defines “ownership” generally in the Civil Code in a manner consistent with the word’s usual and ordinary meaning—“the right of one or more persons to possess and use [a thing] to the exclusion of others.” Cal. Civ. Code § 654. Thus, at base, Flo & Eddie has the right to possess and use its sound recordings and prevent others from possessing and using them. The plain meaning of having “exclusive ownership” in a sound recording is having the right to use and possess the recording to the exclusion of others. There is nothing in that phrase to suggest that the legislature intended to exclude any right or use of the sound recording from the concept of “exclusive ownership.”

The legislature does include a limitation on the ownership right in the statute’s text, “the most reliable indicator of legislative intent.” See Esberg, 28 Cal. 4th at 268. An author has exclusive ownership in his or her sound recording “against all persons except one who independently makes or duplicates another sound recording that does not directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in such prior recording, but consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate the sounds contained in the prior sound recording.” Cal. Civ. Code § 980(a)(2) (emphasis added). In other words, ownership of a sound recording does not include the exclusive right to make “covers” (i.e., recording the song with new instruments) – any person can make a sound recording based on a copyrighted recording, without the permission of the owner, so long as they produce the sounds independently rather than recapture the actual sounds in the copyrighted recording.

Construing the meaning of “exclusive ownership” in context with the rest of § 980(a)(2), which lists the above exception to the ownership right, the Court infers that the legislature did not intend to further limit ownership rights, otherwise it would have indicated that intent explicitly. Because the statute lists an exception, the Court should enlist the “familiar rule of construction…[that] where exceptions to a general rule are specified by statute, other exceptions are not to be implied or presumed.” Geertz v. Ausonio, 4 Cal. App. 4th 1363, 1370 (1992) (citing In re Michael G., 44 Cal. 3d 283, 291 (1988). Courts should “presume the Legislature included all the exceptions it intended to create.” Id. (citing Reynolds v. Reynolds, 54 Cal. 2d 669, 681 (1960)). If § 980(a)(2) had granted “exclusive ownership” in sound recordings without a listed exception, the argument that some limitations on property rights were already inherent in the concept of sound recording ownership might have been more persuasive to the Court. See Opp. 6:21-7:4, 8:25-9:2. However, by finding it necessary to specify an excepted right to ownership in a sound recording, the legislature conveyed that limitations on ownership did not live within the concept itself, rather they required elucidation.

Accordingly, the Court’s textual reading of § 980(a)(2), giving the words “their usual and ordinary meaning and construing them in context[,]” is that the legislature intended ownership of a sound recording in California to include all rights that can attach to intellectual property, save the singular, expressly-stated exception for making “covers” of a recording.

Sirius XM pointed out the legal problems with this, in that California law did not have a public performance right, and thus the court is effectively making up a new right under to bolt onto California's copyright law, but the judge isn't buying it. Sirius further pointed out that California's copyright law was designed to highlight what rights remained under its copyright law after the federalization of copyright for sound recordings, but again the judge isn't buying it.

It's inevitable that Sirius will appeal this ruling so it will be a while before we see where this actually ends up. Furthermore, in one of the other cases against Sirius, brought by the RIAA, it appears that the judge is leaning in the exact opposite direction. So, this situation is far from over.

Filed Under: california, copyright, flo & eddie, pre-1972, pre-1972 sound recordings, public performance, streaming
Companies: pandora, sirius xm

Pretty Much Everyone Sues Sirius XM Over Copyright Issues On Pre-1972 Recordings

from the it's-a-pile-on dept

Over the past few years we've covered a number of stories having to do with the copyright status of pre-1972 recordings. Because of a bit of a quirk in copyright law, sound recordings weren't actually covered by federal copyright law in the US until after 1972. Instead, they were covered by a ridiculous patchwork of state laws -- which is one reason why old songs that would have been in the public domain (even under today's laws) had they been any other form of content, will be locked up for much, much longer. As you might imagine, some of those who hold the copyrights on those older songs have been trying to leverage this in somewhat ridiculous ways, such as arguing that the DMCA safe harbors don't apply to pre-1972 songs.

In the last month and a half or so, it appears that everyone who holds a copyright on pre-1972 recordings has picked a new target: satellite radio giant Sirius-XM. You see, pretty much everyone has assumed for years (with good reason) that the statutory rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board for Sirius XM to pay SoundExchange naturally applied to all copyright-covered music. After all, once you can get past the ridiculous idea that three old judges get to decide how much satellite radio companies have to pay to play music, you'd at least think that the rules applied across the board.

Except, someone recently remembered those pre-1972 recordings. It started back in August, when lawyers for Flo & Eddie, of The Turtles, suddenly started demanding tremendous amounts of money from Sirius. That resulted in a "class action" lawsuit, seeking $100 million, being filed in California. But why stop with California when there are 49 other states? The same lawyers have followed the same basic lawsuit in other states as well. These, apparently, followed a tremendously obnoxious "PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY" letter.

Sensing an opportunity it was missing to suck up even more money, SoundExchange jumped into the fray with its own lawsuit. Now, SoundExchange is the organization which Sirius XM already pays all those statutory rate moneys to... and has for years... but it's arguing that Sirius XM has been trying to avoid paying even the statutory rates on pre-1972 recordings, and that it's done so for years, despite the CRB being clear that it does need to pay up.

Of course, this raises some interesting questions. If Sirius XM really has been not paying SoundExchange for pre-1972 recordings and hasn't licensed those recordings from the copyright holders directly, then, um, it might be in serious trouble. If that's the case, it sounds like an astounding strategic error on the part of Sirius XM. While it may have saved them from paying some amount of revenue to SoundExchange (estimated at 10 to 15%), opening themselves up to having to then license each of those works directly is a nightmare. At the very least, if Sirius XM had continued to pay SoundExchange's statutory rates, it would have some sort of argument against the class action lawsuits. However, if it turns out that the satellite broadcaster had tried to avoid paying anyone... that's probably not going to end well.

Sensing blood in the water (of course), all three of the major labels have now jumped in with their own lawsuit over this issue. Basically, it appears that Sirius XM is going to be fighting this battle against multiple players in multiple courts for a long time. Of course, you can bet a lot of this is just posturing over a different dispute. Sirius XM has been actively trying to route around SoundExchange (who it pays a tremendous amount to each year) and do direct licensing deals. In fact, Sirius XM sued SoundExchange for antitrust violations last year, claiming the organization was colluding to stop artists from opting-out of the SoundExchange deal and doing direct licensing deals with Sirius XM.

In other words... these are just the latest in a whole series of legal battles about how to split up the pie, with little regard to actually trying to make the pie bigger. Typical.

Filed Under: common law, copyright, flo & eddie, pre-1972, pre-1972 sound recordings, the turtles
Companies: riaa, sirius xm, soundexchange