Sirius XM Hit Again Over Pre-1972 Recordings

from the convinced-by-the-other-ruling dept

Having considered the additional authority, the papers submitted and arguments of counsel, the court is persuaded that it should change its tentative ruling.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how Sirius XM had lost its case concerning the public performance rights over pre-1972 sound recordings by the band. As we noted, this ruling effectively upset decades of consensus about public performance rights for pre-1972 works. When that ruling came out, we noted that the judge, in a nearly identical case brought by the RIAA, appeared to be leaning in the opposite direction. It appears that the judge, Mary Strobel, read the other ruling and found it convincing enough to lean back in the other direction . While not a final determination in the case, Strobel has issued a ruling (pdf) that makes it pretty clear that Sirius XM is likely to lose, based on her agreement with that other ruling.The ruling itself is more of an essay of "on the one hand, on the other hand" arguments, rather than a typical judicial ruling (in many ways making it more readable), with the judge more or less suggesting that she's not entirely comfortable with this outcome, but that based on the plain language of California's state copyright law, this is the best way to read the law.Of course, the real mess here is because of the different treatment of pre-1972 recordings. Congress should have fixed this years ago by just making pre-1972 recordings subject to federal copyright law. Except... the recording industry has actually fought hard against this . The hypocrisy here is huge. While the recording industry has fought so hard against making pre-1972 sound recordings subject to federal copyright laws, now they suddenly want aspects of federal copyright law (like public performance rights whichunder previous laws) to apply to those very same works. If Congress made it so those works were under federal copyright, there wouldn't be an issue and all these works would be treated identically. But the truth is that the RIAA wants to keep these works out of federal copyright law to use them as aagainst internet innovation. With rulings like these, it can hold companies like Pandora hostage, since those works wouldn't be subject to compulsory rates. As always, it's all about the RIAA seeking to hold back innovative services unless they'll go bankrupt in paying the RIAA.

Filed Under: california, copyright, pre-1972, pre-1972 sound recordings

Companies: pandora, riaa, sirius xm