CONSUMER: Over the last year or so a number of regulatory authorities have gone after Viagogo, the now controversial secondary ticket resale platform based in Switzerland, over complaints from consumers. Complaints include the use of misleading statements referring to the availability of tickets and the failure to identify seat numbers and seller identities, and notably, the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission have filed legal complaints against the Swiss company. In August, last year, it was the turn of New Zealand’s Commerce Commissio ..read more

COPYRIGHT: The Music Modernization Act (MMA) was signed into US law on 11 October 2018, it plans to do what it says on the tin, namely the overhaul of how copyright underpins the US music industry. One particular area in need of a revamp is the law relating to mechanical tights and digital streaming. Prior to the MMA becoming law in the US, digital music providers (iTunes, Spotify and Google Play…) would file clearance notices with the relevant publisher of the music being streamed. The publishers would then receive a mechanical royalty based on a relatively complicated formula (see ..read more

COPYRIGHT Go to any stadium gig and you’ll be met with a forest of arms holding up mobiles and blocking lines of sight, so people behind feel irritated,” says Katie McPhee, Head of Marketing at Eventbrite who commissioned a new report by ComRes – 1,031 adults who attended a live event in the past twelve months were interviewed.  The research found that: • 70% found it irritating when others constantly take pictures or videos during live performances; • 69% would support more than minimal action to minimise the disruption; • 65% said using their phones to capture images could make them fe ..read more

COPYRIGHT: From Hell to Heaven? Readers will remember that Led Zeppelin had asked the US Ninth Circuit appeals court to reconsider the original ruling in the “Stairway To Heaven” copyright lawsuit ‘en banc’ to determine some key elements of US copyright law,  in the case that involved the  allegation that the 1971 classic was a rip-off of the 1968 instrumental song “Taurus” recorded by Spirit and written by the late Randy “California” Wolfe in a case brought by his estate in 2016. This was always a difficult case, and here the courts have battled to differentiate between th ..read more

COPYRIGHT: We have written about this ongoing litigation for a while now. In case, like us, you don’t want to scroll through the website to find it the background is: EMI, Warner Music Group, Sony Music and Universal Music (the majors) sued Cox Communications last year. The suit claimed that Cox had shoddy systems in place to deal with piracy. It was claimed that Cox’s subscribers were engaging in mass scale piracy and the majors sent “hundreds of thousands” warning letters about the piracy with no resolution. Following this lack of success on part of the majors, they embarked on this pie ..read more

PLANNING: A long standing venue in Guildford venue has successfully appealed a noise abatement order after a court applied the “agent of change” principle.  Guildford Borough Council (GBC) had issued the noise abatement order last October against the Star Inn, a pub in the town that stages live music. The Council acted after receiving a complaint from the developer of a new block of flats nearby. The pub’s owner, the Shepherd Neame brewery, appealed the order, arguing that complying with it would cost a significant portion of the business’s revenue and could therefore potentially for ..read more

COPYRIGHT: The ongoing litigation between Ed Sheeran and Ed Townsend has now been postponed pending the outcome of the ‘Stairway To Heaven’ litigation. Sheeran was sued in 2016 over allegations that his 2014 hit ‘Thinking Out Loud’ lifted “melody, harmony and rhythm compositions” from the Marvin Gaye song ‘Let’s Get It On’. The lawsuit was filed by the estate of Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 Gaye classic – with another Gaye track, ‘Got to Give It Up‘ already at the centre of another major copyright case, the ‘Blurred Lines’ litigation. The Ninth Circuit appeals ..read more

COPYRIGHT: The Stairway To Heaven case will return to Ninth Circuit appeals court, with the court now sitting en banc to hear the plagiarism case. Led Zeppelin are facing a legal action from the estate of songwriter Randy Wolfe (aka Randy California) that alleges that ‘Stairway To Heaven’ copies off a song written by Wolfe. In June 2016 Led Zeppling prevailed, with a jury concluding that ‘Stairway’ wasn’t sufficiently similar to Wolfe’s song ‘Taurus’. The Wolfe estate then appealed that ruling arguing that the jury had been been misdirected on copyright law the judge ..read more

COPYRIGHT: This week it has been reported that Ernie Hines, the American soul musician, has filed a lawsuit against Sony Music and Roc-A-Fella Records, whom published Jay-Z and Timberland 1998 track ‘Paper Chase’ and Timbaland’s 1999 track ‘Toe 2 Toe’. Uproxx reports that the claimed value of the suit is $2million. The allegations stem from Hines’ 1970 track ‘Help Me Put Out The Flame (In My Heart)’, a sample of which has allegedly been used in ‘Paper Chase’ and ‘Toe 2 Toe’. Hines claims that, whilst the tracks were released nearly two decades ago, he has only just heard them, the Blast repo ..read more

CONTRACT: A Court in New York has ruled that the Woodstock Festival’s financial backers had no right to cancel the event without the agreement of the organisers of the Woodstock 50, although the court declined to force Dentsu to return $18 million to the Event’s bank account. The 50th anniversary celebration of the original Woodstock which is planned August, was thrown into doubt last month when Amplifi Live, a division of the Dentsu Aegis Network – announced that the event had been cancelled. The Woodstock company rebutted this saying at the time Amplifi had no right to make such a decision a ..read more