Its been a long time coming, but a change gon’ come. The “next great copyright act” is the change that Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, is calling on Congress to make (perhaps taking a cue from our neighbors up north, eh?) Among the list of changes called for by the Register is reformation in [...]

Many interested in the IP and Tech fields have heard of the term “Patent Troll” to refer to a rights holder who may be overly-litigious, aggressive in enforcement, or excessively alleges patent infringements for the sake of coercing money and tying people in ligation. In the past few years, however, a similar strategy has developed [...]

The Wiz? Virgin Records? Tower Records? Where do we go to browse used CDs today (with the exception of a slight few “mom and pop” shops that stood strong against the reign of an emerging Internet, thankfully)? Music aficionados alike, can universally relate to the exhilarating feeling of walking into a music store with $20 [...]

Earlier this year, Grooveshark and parent company Escape Media Group (“Escape”) filed a subpoena in Los Angeles Superior Court against Digital Music News (“DMN”).  The subpoena compelled the disclosure of an anonymous commenter’s identity.  This petition could have “chilling effects” on the rights and obligations of Internet bloggers.  An unfavorable ruling on DMN’s appeal would impose [...]

 On June 13, 2012 the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names  and Numbers (ICANN) announced those companies whose bids have been accepted to become the exclusive registry service for “.music” generic top-level domain names (gTLD). Some of the top candidates included internet stalworths like Google (Charleston Road Registry) and Amazon (Valideus); alongside music industry-endorsed [...]

Last week, I went on Ticketmaster to purchase a ticket to see one of my favorite artists, The Weeknd, in concert. Tickets went on sale on Thursday at 10 am. There I was on my iPad at 10am, trying unsuccessfully to process my order.  I tried for thirty minutes – on my iPad, my Blackberry, and [...]

  We’ve been able to pay to digitally download sound recordings through legitimate services for over a decade now, and these services have grown pretty rapidly in terms of both scale and profitability. So much so, that iTunes (so far the most successful of the digital distribution platforms) has sold more than 10 billion songs [...]

  Let’s start by taking a look at Grooveshark. Universal Music Group (UMG) filed a complaint in Manhattan District Court on November 18, 2011 against Escape Media and five of its executives alleging that Grooveshark engaged in a plethora of infringing conduct. According to the complaint, “Escape publically touts the fact that it has a [...]

In a world where Newt Gingrich is being sued for copyright infringement by the composers of “Eye of the Tiger”, lays the hopes and dreams of Indie music labels.  These labels have been making gains in pursuing their goals; the start of which was their “Manifesto” produced on January 29th. January 28-31, 2012 marked this [...]

The “world’s largest funding platform,” Kickstarter raised $20 million for musicians in 2011. The Kickstarter-crowdfunding model demonstrates that musicians can successfully (and directly) obtain funding for their creative projects from their fans, without record label backing- either major or independent. This all begs the question, what does Kickstarter’s $20 million mean for the future of [...]