Agreement

SoundExchange Pureplay Webcasters Agreement (PDFs Attached)

Authored by Ned Sherman on July 13, 2009 - 10:59am.

Last week, we reported that SoundExchange, the firm set up by the major record labels to collect and distribute digital royalties, announced that it has agreed on new streaming music royalties for "pureplay" commercial webcasters. For those of you interested in the specifics of the deal, here are "Exhibit A - Agreed Rates and Terms for Commercial Webcasters Including Small Pureplay Webcasters" and "SoundExchange's Letter to the Copyright Office about the Agreement."

MPAA, BitTorrent File-Sharing Network Sign Anti-Piracy Agreement

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on November 28, 2005 - 10:36am.

Washington - The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced that it has reached an agreement with the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing service and major movie studios to clamp down on the unauthorized sharing of movies on the service. Under the agreement, BitTorrent founder and CEO Bram Cohen will remove links to pirated movies from the search engine on his BitTorrent.com website. "BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely," Cohen said. "BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com's search engine." The move will not stop trading on BitTorrent's network, however, as there are many other search engines and websites that can locate both authorized and copyrighted files available for download from BitTorrent. "We are glad that Bram Cohen and his company are working with us to limit access to infringing files on the BitTorrent.com Web site," said MPAA CEO Dan Glickman.

Large Webcasters, SoundExchange Propose Music Royalty Agreement

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on August 31, 2004 - 10:03am.

Washington -- The Digital Media Association (DiMA), a trade group of large music webcasters, announced that it has filed a joint petition with SoundExchange, the recording industry's digital royalty collection body, to renew the current webcasting royalty rates for the period of 2005-2006. The U.S. Copyright Office will publish the agreement and accept comments in its review of the proposed deal, which would eliminate the necessity of holding another contentious Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel (CARP). The agreement would cover large webcasters including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and RealNetworks, while smaller webcasters would still be free to negotiate their own terms. "DiMA companies continue to believe that royalties paid by our industry to sound recording companies and artists are unfairly high and above-market-rate," said DiMA executive director Jon Potter. "Nevertheless, in the interests of focusing our industry's limited resources on the continuing effort to build profitable businesses and defeat piracy, DiMA has agreed to avoid arbitration and the associated costs for at least another year or two."

Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement Addresses Intellectual Property

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on February 10, 2004 - 9:35am.

Sydney -- The recently announced Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement includes an Intellectual Property Chapter that will serve to strengthen protection for copyright owners and enhance intellectual property enforcement in the country on a par with the U.S. The agreement will lengthen the term of copyrights in Australia, as well as create an "expeditious process that allows for copyright owners to engage with Internet Service Providers and subscribers to deal with allegedly infringing copyright material on the Internet" -- similar to the process recently used by the U.S. record industry to prosecute individual file-swappers. Also included are provisions to tighten controls on circumventing technological protection of copyright material -- with "public interest exceptions;" an agreement on standards of copyright protection; and increased penalties for satellite TV and other copyright infringers. The agreement comes as a result of U.S. efforts to bring international intellectual property laws closer to the terms of its own Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

tags: Australia | U.S | Agreement | Intellectual |