RightsFlow: What Kind of Racket Are These Guys Running?

David Clowery
7 mars 2016
2 min de lecture

/ Pulsar redactor's note : this is a resume of the offical article to highlight important fact we have to face in nowadays music industry. Artists have rights that they are able to defend. See full article on link below /

Background on the “Notice of Intention to Obtain Compulsory Mechanical License”

... When a streaming service like Google Play ingests a recording into their computers to distribute they must also obtain a license from the songwriter or the songwriter’s appointed agent. To get the compulsory license, by law all Google Play need do is send a notice to the songwriter, their publisher or licensing agent within 30 days of distribution. This is called a “Notice of Intention to Obtain a Compulsory Mechanical License.” Or NOI for short.

...

However consider the following:

1/ I’m the one who has had my rights limited by the US government.

...

2/ Songwriters are forced by the US Government through the compulsory license to go into the music streaming business.

...

3/ If these services really can’t find the songwriters, they are allowed to send the NOIs to the Copyright Office.

...

4/ Licenses for around 60% of the songs (by popularity) can be obtained by cutting deals with the three major music publishers.

...

5/ No one is forcing the streaming services to make available every single song ever published.

...

... Over the last few months I’ve received invalid NOIs via the USPS from these services. In particular if the NOI is late then the compulsory license is no longer available for those compositions.

... And perhaps more importantly, since the notice is invalid the writer now has the ability to say no to these services. Why would a writer want to say no? ... It’s entirely possible the songwriter would prefer to have a smaller audience or market share but generate more revenue!

...

So that is why it is highly problematic that these services, RightsFlow, MRI, HFA and MediaNet are sending NOIs that are essentially fake NOIs to songwriters via the USPS. As a result it is highly likely that even sophisticated songwriters are effectively being duped and deprived of their legal right to negotiate a direct license.

... The end result is that thousands of songwriters may be deprived of their legal rights. Why hasn’t the Copyright office weighed in on this issue?

The Mother of All Bad NOIs

With that said I’d like to post here what I consider to be the mother of all bad NOIs. The language in this letter is so tortured, it can’t simply be bad writing. Right? I mean surely this letter was run by the legal department. RightsFlow is part of Google. Google is the largest or second largest company by market cap in the world (depending on the stock market). I’m pretty sure they have some good legal staff. Anyway have a look. What do you think?