THE COPYRIGHT LIMITATION & REFORM ACT of 2004*

1. " No copyright law or other law shall abridge the right of an artist
to stream his own material from a website that he owns or controls".
2. Any person or corporation who has taken an assignment of copyright
from any creator or creators , and who is convicted or is found to have
violated the Racketeering (RICO) , securities fraud, or the antitrust
laws, in a civil or criminal proceeding, shall be ineligible to hold in
its name, or to receive income on account of, any copyright, patent, or
other monopoly granted by these United States. Such corporation shall
turn over any copyrights and licenses thereon to the copyright office,
who shall hold them in trust for the creators. Any income in respect of
the exploitation of any such copyright shall be paid 75% to the creators
and 25% to the copyright office. The Copyright Office may designate one
or more persons or corporations to manage the exploitation of said
copyrights, so long as said persons are either citizens of or domiciled
in the United States.
3. No creator or corporation which creator owns or controls, shall be
liable for attorneys fees under the fee shifting provisions of the
Copyright Act. ( The Artists Day in Court Act).

If you don't think Congress will pass it, just call it "Patriot Act of 2004"

I like what I see so far... I will get back to you...

Alright I understand base legalese, And I have to say wTF does it mean?

Seems straightforward.

You are freaking radical, dude. LOL I could see number 1 getting through maybe, but number 2, that's a tough one.

Regarding number 1, I can't tell if it is intended to govern artists still under contract with a label. I think some new artists under contract have their web sites owned or controlled by the label. So if they wanted to stream, they would have to start another web site under this law.

flesh it out. It only a beginning.

OK. I'll take a shot at number 1 tomorrow. Must sleep now.

wheres the term limitation to 14 years?

I have a slightly off topic question for the IP lawyers out there ...

Under current law, let's say my father took some home movies of our family outing in Disney World many years ago.

Its' coming on his 70th bithday and I want to make a website using his old movies. My family is disbursed across the globe, so this is a great way to have everyone think of him.

What happens if Mickey Mou$e comes into the picture? Or he happened to catch some copyright thing in the background?

There is also the possibility that a copyright song is playing in the background.

LOL -- Item 2 is hysterical. I love it.

Do we recognize from the outset that the U.S. Copyright Office is simply not equipped to handle this challenge? Allowing them to farm out the work might be feasible, with proper oversight.

But considering that this would require all the labels to lose their copyrights (can you say "price-fixing"? I knew you could.), there is going to be an entire cottage industry that will have to pop up to handle this immediately upon adoption.

george, I know. (hehehe).

And no Mickey mouse questions. (just kidding)

Wow! Three paragraphs to replace how many tomes of twisted copyright jargon? I especially like the idea of the labels losing their copyrights.

I can understand the appeal to many on this site for Item 2 of the proposed Copyright Reform act, but I'm still not so sure that this would be a good idea.

I would think that for the industry at large it would still be in the best interest for individual creators to have the right to 'sell' or 'contract away' their copyrights if they felt it was in their best interest to do so.

Yes, I know that the RIAA appears to have 'ripped off' many of the artists buy acquiring their copyrights back when the artists were a 'no-name' band, only for those copyrights to become much more valuable later on. But, to give the devil his due, the RIAA could often claim that it was their support and backing that allowed that particular artist to become famous in the first place.

Of course, not all artists become rich and famous even with backing by RIAA affiliates - well, just as with risky investments, when an artist signs away his/her copyrights willingly, you take your chances.

I know a lot of folks who feel they were 'ripped off' by IPO's and other investment 'opportunities'. In some cases, perhaps they were ripped off. But the answer would not be to prevent folks from investing in the stock market just because there are people who make bad investment decisions. Likewise, I'm not sure it is a good idea to restrict the value of copyrights my making them 'untradeable'.

The real problem is that copyright lives have been extended way way beyond what is reasonable. This was done not by market forces but by using the political process (i.e. lobbyist).

THIS ROCKS! Leflaw, if you wrote that, man you are good. I'm down with this.
-bulkeraser

The Codewarrior is 100 percent behind this. Larry, you're a genius. I wish I wasn't so longwinded or I would have written that .

This was so remarkable, I just had to say, Well Done. Everyone should get behind this!
~CodeWarrior

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

YEAAAAAAH! CodeWarrior !
Seems like we are finally really getting united.
This REALLY ROCKS!
-bulk

Code it is so good to see you post here again, I am very pleased!!

Good to see you again, Code.

Why not call it the True Patriots Act of 2004?

This thread should continue adding "legislative code" , working toward a REAL PROPOSED Amendment.

FOSSIL is a lobbyist, and we are getting that end together as we speak.

CODEWARRIOR is our director of Information

Joe Knapp is our webmaster.

GeorgeZ is our assistant webmaster

Tom Barger is our roving reporter and media pundit.

More luminaries on the way.

I am trying to pay the bills and run a website(s) and a law practice. And play some rock n roll and reggae violin and guitar.

Life is too short to be subtle.

I just wanted to publicly thank Larry (leflaw) for his leadership and for all he is doing. I just hope everyone understands what sacrifices Larry makes to keep things afloat and going forward, and this is for you, it's for me, and it's for our children and children's children.

The powers of evil have tried to erect
a toll booth on the road to freedom. We must make sure that freedom is not diluted, and that it is preserved for our heirs.

Just my way of saying thank you personally to Larry/leflaw!
~CodeWarrior.
UNITED AGAINST THE RIAA

Great piece of legislation leflaw, some really good ideas are finally coming together. Nice to see Code here supporting this as well.

Suikio

Leflaw -- Here is some input back from a songwriter member of BMI (not me) from Nashville that I received on this verbiage... This is not my question but obviously if there are some answers to the questions it could help us in identifying some of the concerns that will come out of the woodwork on this proposal:


Quote:
Any income in respect of the exploitation of any such copyright shall be paid 75% to the creators and 25% to the copyright office.

From #2 cited.

If this means the Copyright Office suddenly becomes something like the RIAA with their "Controlled Composition Clause". ..
(from the Janis Ian Article)
Quote:
Singer-songwriters have to accept the "Controlled Composition Clause" (which dictates that they'll be paid only 75% of the rates set by Congress in publishing royalties) for any major or subsidiary label recording contract, or lose the contract. Simply put, the clause demanded by the labels provides that a) if you write your own songs, you will only be paid 3/4 of what Congress has told the record companies they must pay you, and b) if you co-write, you will use your "best efforts" to ensure that other songwriters accept the 75% rate as well. If they refuse, you must agree to make up the difference out of your share


...then my question is why? In a typical Publishing Contract, if you look at the 'rights' to a song and if the song were not written by a writer employed by the Publisher, simply assigned to a Publisher by an independent Writer; the Publisher gets a '100%' share and the Writer gets a '100%' share.

The double 100% makes it clearer, in actual fact they each benefit from 50% of a 100% possibility of Royalties.

Anyway, aside from forcing the Owner of the work to accept a 75% share of his/her respective 100% and handing a 25% portion to a government office seems a bit curious... unless the recipient cited in that clause...
Quote:
The Copyright Office may designate one or more persons or corporations to manage the exploitation of said copyrights, so long as said persons are either citizens of or domiciled in the United States.

Janis was talking about a clause in a recording contract wherein if you retain the rights to your own music ("controlled composition"), the record labels only pay 75% royalties. They also generally only pay royalties on 9 or 10 songs per release, too, which discourages artists from using the rest of the available disc space on a CD.

Personally, I'd rather see the extra 25% go to the government rather than the record labels. The government would simply be much more accountable than the record labels have been for the past 100 years.

Besides, I don't think that allowing the collection of royalties to remain in the hands of blatant lawbreakers (extortion, antitrust) is in anyone's best interests except the criminals.

Don't call me a leader. I am a terrible leader. I admit it. I was a sideman when I played music professionally too.

But sometimes you find yourself in a position where if you don't do something, no one will. Bill Evans felt that way, and so do I.

I found myself in a position some years ago to see the approaching menace that we all now know. I'm just speaking out.

Interesting thoughts and proposal Larry, but to be blunt, have you run this by someone who has the legal skills to pick it apart? I'm not a lawyer, but point #1 /seems/ to be invalidate long-standing and constitutionally upheld Contract Law.

Copyright Reform is critically necessary, so it's important that whatever is pushed for can stand the heat that WILL eventually be applied to its feet.

Peace,
Chuck

Re: the "mechanical controlled composition clause" is also set at 75 percent by coincidence.

We could make it less, the idea being that a) usually, there are multile creators, so a goverment trust might help
b) I patterned it after divestiture statutes, but allowing the artists to remain the majority of the divestiture
c) The government needs money.

What "long-standing and constitutionally upheld Contract Law"? , Chuck? Its just part of making fair use statutorily defined.


And I am running it by the commmunity now. There are lawyers here, and more are on the way, along with guns and money - (Thats a lyrical reference folks).

"What "long-standing and constitutionally upheld Contract Law"?"

The one that gives a label full ownership of the artist's musical assets in all forms and mediums in compliance with the signed contract. Speaking "label-sleazily", if #1 got passed, I'd add a clause to the artist contract specifically exempting me (the label) from having to abide by it, maybe in exchange for a few more bucks of fully recoupable front money.

"And I am running it by the commmunity now."

OK. That's my cynicism talking, because when I see 100% approval of a given idea before any changes or edits have taken place, I get suspicious. Sorry.

Chuck

Last note for now. Thanks for all the welcoming notes. Much appreciated!

The copyright reform legislative code from leflaw, is certainly a beginning, and I applaud leflaw for getting started. Copyright reform, and solid, proactive work against the globalization/WIPO/European Directive is essential (better to light a candle than to curse the darkness).

Consider this.
"IP Justice has published a White Paper that analyzes key section of the
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) Treaty chapter on intellectual
property rights. According the IP Justice report "FTAA: A Threat to
Freedom and Free Trade," the Treaty would require all 34 FTAA countries
in the Western Hemisphere to send P2P file-sharers to prison. The FTAA
Treaty also contains 'DMCA-like' anti-circumvention laws. IP Justice
sponsored a petition calling upon the FTAA Treaty negotiators to delete
the entire chapter on intellectual property rights from the FTAA Treaty.
FTAA Treaty negotiators meet in Miami from Nov. 16-21, 2003, and if
passed, the treaty will take effect in 2005 and govern the lives of 800
million citizens of the Americas."
http://ipjustice.org/FTAA/release20031020.shtml"
~Code

" The one that gives a label full ownership of the artist's musical assets in all forms and mediums in compliance with the signed contract."

This means that the artist is doing "work for hire" while they are bound to the contract. There should be a drastic distinction made between those works made "for hire" and those in which the artist retains the rights.

A copyright should not be transferrable. The creator should retain the rights to license it for exploitation, but ownership should not be a negotiable right.

Limitation on licenses -- 7 years.
Limitation on copyright -- 28 years.

Any copyright infringement litigation must be initiated by the copyright owner (the artist).

--------

Intent -- I'm thinking that if it were up to the artists to sue their fans, instead of the record labels, the terrorism would never have started in the first place.

This brings up a thought -- If the intent of laws were a part of their wording, wouldn't this reduce the ability for the kind of misguided activity going on under the auspices of the DMCA?

I'm seeing a ton of legal scholars going back to letters between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison concerning copyright, monopolies, etc.

When an issue gets to the Supreme Court, the argument inherently comes down to the intent of the founding fathers. If the intent had been clearly spelled out, it would save a lot of legal foolishness spent trying to bastardize the intent.

"This means that the artist is doing "work for hire" while they are bound to the contract."

Totally correct.

"A copyright should not be transferrable."

That's a legal can of worms. What if I buy a company, does that mean all their coprights immediately go public domain since I'll never be allowed to own them?

Also, if the copyright is never transferrable, that's quite a boon for a competing company. Suppose my competitor has an exclusive license to your terrific work. Since I can't get it, I can have you killed. Since your copyright isn't transferrable to anyone else, it becomes public domain and I get it for free.

"The creator should retain the rights to license it for exploitation, but ownership should not be a negotiable right."

Totally agree, as long as it helps the original creator.

"Limitation on licenses -- 7 years.
Limitation on copyright -- 28 years"

Licenses, YEP. Copyright, anything from 28 to 50 years.

Good points, chuck. Works for hire should be transferrable.

I would think an inheritance factor would overrule the inability to transfer otherwise, although I'm sure it would have to be implicitly spelled out.

The idea is to "promote the useful arts" by making sure the artist can only get screwed for 7 years at a time. If his or her work was still commercially viable after 7 years, there arises an option to renegotiate.

Currently, when an artist gives up a copyright to the label, they lose control of that work for 35 years. So a mistake you make at age 20 will cost you until you're 55.

I like promotion of the useless arts.

"There are lawyers here, and more are on the way, along with guns and money"

The shit has hit the fan. Here's my shot at number 1.

Notwithstanding any other law or contractual specification to the contrary, all recording artists shall have the right to stream material released under their name from any web site that they own or control. In the event that the recording artist has a web site owned or controlled by a record company or its subdivisions or affiliates, the recording artist shall have the right to stream material released by that record company on the web site owned or controlled by the record company or it subdivisions or affiliates.

"Speaking "label-sleazily", if #1 got passed, I'd add a clause to the artist contract specifically exempting me (the label) from having to abide by it"

You can't do that under my law.

If you're going to make a law and then allow "contractural specification[s] to the contrary," you're asking for trouble.

fatchuck could hire a hitman and get away with it now! The hitman has a contractual specification that just happens to run a little contrary to the law.

CODE!! GEORGE!! LEFLAW!! GDZ!! FATCHUCK!! WOW! this feels GOOD. Brothers and sisters united, we gonna FIGHT!!

"If you're going to make a law and then allow "contractural specification[s] to the contrary," you're asking for trouble."

My clause means the opposite of what I think that you think it means. My paragraph means that there are no contractual provisions to the contrary permitted. Even if a contrary contractual provision exists, the statute overrules it. That first phrase is standard legalese which means "it doesn't matter what else is out there, this overrules all of it."

Actually, the clause doesn't say that a contractual provision to the contrary is not permissible, only that if it does exist then it is overruled by the statute. This means that even if Fat Chuck convinces his artist to waive the streaming right, this waiver is null and void in the face of the statute.

Got it.

I actually threw that in there after I read FC's post. It would make the statute harder to pass because it would raise the ire of people who believe in "freedom of contract".

I am passing on more questions & suggestions... I did not draft these but have included them from a friend and collegue who read the proposal and offers the following for consideration:

Item #1 is straight forward and to the point. I think everyone would agree this is fair. The people that couldn't lay a legitimate claim to this Item #1 would be song writers employed by a Publisher, unless they have a clause in their contract giving them this right. These writers are creating works "for hire" and being paid a salary to do so. All the rights to a song written under these conditions belong to the Publisher... (unless, like I said, there have been other contractual agreements).

Item #2 might be a stretch, or at least a difficult one to enforce...
Quote:
2. Any person or corporation who has taken an assignment of copyright from any creator or creators , and who is convicted or is found to have violated the Racketeering (RICO) , securities fraud, or the antitrust laws, in a civil or criminal proceeding, shall be ineligible to hold in its name, or to receive income on account of, any copyright, patent, or other monopoly granted by these United States. Such corporation shall turn over any copyrights and licenses thereon to the copyright office, who shall hold them in trust for the creators...


The first thing to be done, in order to apply Item #2, would be to get the Government (either State or Federal) to apply the RICO Act. That would be tough to do.

First off a writer/artist would have to hire an attorney to investigate the operation of the publishing/record company in an effort to make a reasonable determination that they are in violation of the RICO Act. Can you imagine the depositions, the hourly fees, the atorney's office staff, etc., and how expensive that might be? A bill would be payable to the attorney even if he uncovered no violations... I doubt this would be a pro-bono case.

The attorney would have to determine the following:

RICO Act
Law intended to eradicate organized crime by establishing strong sanctions and forfeiture provisions.

The RICO (law) allows for racketeering convictions. But it goes much further than that. It allows a jury to convict a person for being a member of a criminal conspiracy. Therefore, if the government can prove that a person is a member of a criminal organization such as the Mafia, he or she may be convicted for crimes committed by the organization, even if that person is not present or has little knowledge of the actual event.

***Do a Google Search for ("RICO Act", definitions) for more information. I tried to link two pages but they failed to register in this post.***

I'm sure, if the attorney couldn't find any violation there (and isn't it questionable that he would, in light of the probable historical facts to the contrary in the way the Record Labels and large Publishers operate?)
But if he found no RICO violations, could a writer or artist afford the continued investigation into "securities fraud, or (violations to) the antitrust laws"?

If the attorney could prove any of these violations or find probable cause that there may be, in fact, violations, the next step would be to go to the State or Federal Attorneys General and get their cooperation in the filing of criminal proceedings using the RICO Act and (I'm reasonably certain) filing charges that go to Securities Fraud and Antitrust Laws.

It would take mighty deep pockets to pull that off. The only thing to make it cheaper would be a class action suit, where a bunch of writers/artists pooled their resources to lessen to 'ouch' factor.

The other sentence in Item #2 highlighted above:
Quote:
who shall hold them in trust for the creators

is more or less almost a 'given', except that the Copyright Office only files the Copyright and doesn't in reality hold that Copyright "in trust". If the Publisher, in the case of a song, lost his 'rights', then the Copyright Law automatically comes into play and all the rights go to the creator. If a writer never assigns his work to a publisher, or never writes 'for hire', the fact is the writer owns 100% of the writers share and 100% of all the publishing. So this sentence doesn't apply UNLESS a law is passed to allow for these works/songs to automatically go into a Trust of sorts (after a successful suit against a record/publishing company). These works/songs would then be covered under a sort of bastardized version of the Copyright Law... a Law that would have to be passed prior to or subsequent to a successful suit.

That one sentence I referred to in the previous post (also from Item #2):
Quote:
The Copyright Office may designate one
or more persons or corporations to manage the exploitation of said
copyrights...


brings into play the need for an entity separate from the Copyright Office in order to (il)legitimately apply the 25% Fee cited in the same Item #2.

Jumping to Item #3:
Quote:
3. No creator or corporation which creator owns or controls, shall be liable for attorneys fees under the fee shifting provisions of the
Copyright Act.


This is, of course, a given if and only if , a suit brought against the Record/Publishing companies using the criteria of Item #2 is successful.(***see edit below)

Since success for bringing suit using Item #2 is far-fetched (in all but the smallest and dumbest Record/Publishing companies) to say the least, Item #3 becomes a moot point. (*** see edit below)

In closing, Item #1 is already a fact of Law, providing the 'work' is legitimately owned by the creator; so no new Law need be written. The facts of Item #1 are already enforceable.

Item #2 asks the Government to intervene against some of their biggest contributors on the one hand, and is an extremely l-o-n-g shot on the other. Which, in turn, renders Item #3 useless. (***see edit below)

That's my educated and wise opinion

------------------------------------------edit--------

Actually, Item #3 seems ambiguous and borderline dangerous to the individual attempting to bring action.

Quote:
3. No creator or corporation which creator owns or controls, shall be liable for attorneys fees under the fee shifting provisions of the
Copyright Act.

If the Record/Publisher company isn't found to be in violation of Item #2, then does this say the writer/artist who brought the original complaint to the attorney will be liable for these fees? It reads that way as far as I can see. If a Publisher who legitimately owns the copyright of a song created "for hire", isn't found to be in violation of the Laws cited, then isn't that Publisher arguably the defacto 'creator' who controlls the 'work' and therefore not liable for attorneys fees? I think so. The wording of this Item #3 puts the loser in debt to the attorney, and the fact that it is unlikely any legitimate Record/Publishing company will be in violation of the Laws cited, the poor writer/artist will owe a shit load of money.

This reads clearly as if it were written by an attorney who knows how to cover his butt from both ways and consequently assures his making a pretty penny, no matter the outcome.

ok, given the caveat that I'm not a layer but I know the jokes ...
here's something of a simplification.
RICO was passed as a means of going after organized crime. They had to make the definition of racketeering and organized crime loose enough to cover large AND small criminal organizations.

If you have TWO people, who discuss or plan an act that would violate prevailing laws, you have a de facto criminal conspiracy. That's all you need. Now, as for "contractual" obligations. If you think about laws like poker or like the "rock,scissors, paper" game,
Federal law trumps (or beats) any contract between citizens. Furthermore,
you cannot sue for enforcement of any contract which breaks federal law, because, courts refuse to enforce illegal agreements.

The KEY to all this, is either one of two things. One, make a federal law that the RIAA will be sure to violate, or two,
find an existing violation that the RIAA has engaged in such as fraud.

I know many will disagree, but I've tried to bring this down to the lay level.

And, as a side note, know why lawyers write such wordy papers? They would say it is to be specific and to avoid loopholes. The truth is that lawyers used to get paid by the word. Hmmm...reckon that has anything to do with "Whereas the party of the first part as an affirmative duty to the party of the second part, without reservation and including but not limiting all provisions...yada yada yada..."
-bulkeraser

"Making bacon...or is it Macon Bacon...
porcine peddling by any other name in Georgia"

actually, if an agreement between citizens was something upheld by the Supreme Court, and a state or federal law interfered with a basic agreement which SHOULD be legal, of course it could be appealed to the Supreme Court, and it they accept the writ of certiorari, and decide for the individuals, under Marbury v. Madison, they could rule the federal or state law invalid.

clear as mud,right?