5 Key Music Legal Cases

Reuters put out a list of the 5 most important Legal Cases that involved music this year. The cases and their holdings:

UMG RECORDINGS V. VEOH NETWORKS

UMG had argued to the court that Veoh was liable for copyright infringement by encouraging users to upload videos, which Veoh translated into the proper format, organized and categorized, then ultimately streamed to millions of Web surfers — all without paying copyright owners. But the court held that Veoh qualified for a “safe harbor” under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, because the site followed a policy of promptly taking down videos upon notification from UMG and kicking “repeat infringers” off the site. Under the court’s interpretation of the DMCA, a Web-based company can enlist its users to upload unlicensed works, and it’s up to the copyright owner to issue takedown notices — sometimes multiple times. If upheld on appeal, the decision represents a major shift in power from copyright owners toward online companies that rely on user-generated content.

CAPITOL RECORDS V. THOMAS-RASSET; SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT V. TENENBAUM

Of the more than 17,000 individuals the major labels targeted for downloading and “sharing” songs through peer-to-peer networks, only Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum fought all the way to trial. They both lost badly. A Minneapolis jury socked Thomas-Rasset with a whopping $1.9 million verdict for infringing 24 songs, and a Boston jury ordered Tenenbaum to pay $675,000 after he admitted to infringing 30 works.

SWEDEN VS. THE PIRATE BAY

It combined a criminal case brought by the government of Sweden with a civil copyright action pressed by major record labels, movie studios and game publishers. But the result was familiar to that of similar fights in the United States against piracy facilitators like Napster, Grokster, Aimster, TorrentSpy and Usenet.com: a verdict for the plaintiffs and harsh punishment — a year in prison and an award of $3.5 million in damages — for the four individual defendants. But the Pirate Bay’s servers have already migrated several times to other countries, users can easily migrate to other similar sites, and appeals will drag on for years. The case is a stark reminder that even big legal victories don’t necessarily translate into big reductions in copyright infringement.

BRIDGEPORT MUSIC V. UMG RECORDINGS

If anyone still doubts that recording artists must obtain proper licenses before incorporating samples of others’ works into songs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit cleared up that confusion November 4. That’s when the court issued a decision upholding a jury verdict of $88,980 against Universal for sampling George Clinton’s lyric “Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yea” and the word “dog” from “Atomic Dog” in a 1998 song called “D.O.G. in Me” by R&B group Public Announcement.

ARISTA RECORDS V. USENET.COM

In 2005, copyright owners achieved one of their most significant legal victories, when the Supreme Court held in MGM v. Grokster that peer-to-peer infringement facilitators could be held liable for “inducing” their users to infringe. A federal court’s June 30 decision in Arista Records v. Usenet.com was another setback for sites that seek to build a business based on users’ copyright infringement. Among the factors the court cited as supporting liability were Usenet’s overwhelming use of the service for infringement, the fact that the site advertised the availability of infringing works and the technical assistance it provided to users seeking pirated material. The court also noted that Usenet could have, but refused to, employ filters to block downloads of infringing material.