Part 27

 The earthquake came between 1995-2000 in four major cases: La Cienega Music v. Z.Z. Top (California, 1995); Mayhew v. Gusto Records (Tennessee, 1997); Mayhew v. Allsup (Tennessee, 1999); and ABKO Music v. LaVerne (California, 2000). All dealt with a single question: does issuing a phonorecord “publish” its composition?

In La Cienega Music v. Z.Z. Top, John Lee Hooker and Bernard Besman wrote and recorded “Boogie Chillen” in 1948. Hooker assigned his half of the composition to Besman, who registered it as sheet music in 1967 on behalf of La Cienega Music. They wrote a second version of “Boogie Chillen” in 1950. Hooker also assigned this version to Besman, who registered it as sheet music in 1970. A third version of the song was recorded by Hooker on an album, Canned Heat, in 1970. It was authorized by La Cienega, and was registered as a unitary musical work (PA/PAU) in 1992 by Besman and Hooker. In 1973 Z.Z. Top released a best-selling song called “La Grange.” In subsequent litigation, Z.Z. Top’s primary defense was that “Boogie Chillen” was in the public domain (i.e. they largely admitted that they copied parts of “Boogie Chillen”).

Z.Z. Top claimed the three versions of the song were published in 1948, 1950 and 1970, the dates they were issued to the public. La Cienega claimed they were published in 1967, 1970 and 1992, the dates when registration was secured.

The court explicitly declined to follow the Rosette v. Rainbow approach, which would have adopted the La Cienega dates. The fear of the court was that the Rosette approach would have given the owner of a pre-1972 sound recording an incentive to delay registering a work until it was discovered that someone was profitably infringing it. Because the copyright duration is 28 years, a forthright owner who registered a work got 28 years of coverage, but a disingenuous owner got unlimited coverage, at least until an successful infringer was discovered. The owner then registered, starting the 28-year clock. A song like “Boogie Chillen” sat in the deep freeze after its initial success, only to have the licensing clock start after 25 years when Z.Z. Top made it a chart-buster in 1973. Had the song been forthrightly copyrighted in 1948, the year it was written and first recorded, its copyright would have expired in 1976, so La Cienega could have received as few as three year’s royalties from Z.Z. Top.

Judge Fernandez, in a dissent, tried to salvage the Rosette system, which he called “quite logical, indeed correct.” Acknowledging that there was a potential problem of owners holding their compositions back from copyright in the hopes that some lucrative infringer may stumble onto the scene, he suggested that the Rosette system be slightly modified to prevent registration beyond 28 years after the first date of creation or publication. “Thus,” he concluded, “the author who does not register in a timely fashion cannot artfully extend the time during which he can exploit his work.”

To be continued…

Part 26

When Congress could not reach an agreement on what to do about performer’s rights in the 1976 Copyright Act it threw its hands in the air and ordered the Copyright Office to report back in 1978. They dutifully turned in a 2000-page compendium of studies and testimony that was equally inconclusive. The issue went nowhere until the digital age forced the hand of record companies and digital service providers in the  Digital Performance Right in Sound Act of 1995 and the 2002 Copyright Royalty and Reform Act. The 1995 legislation mandated that 2.5 percent of the funds received by the rights-holders of sound recordings be set aside for a musicians’ fund administered by the American Federation of Musicians, and 45 percent was to go to the artists actually featured on the musical work. Pre-1972 phonorecords could not be included in this system, of course, because under section 301(c) of the 1976 Act they were specifically barred from federal copyright status.

The copyright code amendments enacted since then have created a digital license fee for recorded music, but for pre-1972 phonorecords the record companies have elected not to take advantage of it, preferring instead to see that the older records remain outside of federal copyright status. Although there is an increasing amount of grumbling within the ranks of RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, the industry’s official position continues to be that common-law copyright is preferable to the advantages federal copyright offers through the new digital use fees. “They are leaving an awful lot of money sitting on the table based on some really vague reasons,” remarked one ARSC member recently involved with the Library of Congress’s National Recording Preservation Plan.

One of the first court cases interpreting the 1976 Copyright Act occurred in 1986 in Jones v. Virgin Records, a dispute over the well-known song “Handy Man,” a three-time Billboard top 25 single. Composers Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell, under the name Shalimar Music Corporation, registered “Handy Man” as sheet music in 1959. It was published on paper in 1964. Jones recorded it in 1960, Del Shannon in 1964, James Taylor in 1977, and George O’Dowd (Boy George) in 1983. Jones and Blackwell registered the sound recording in August 1984 using a PA/PAU registration for a basic music work and submitted a cassette tape.

Jones and Blackwell alleged that O’Dowd copied elements of “Handy Man” that were unique to the 1960 phonorecord version (but were not in the 1959 sheet music version). O’Dowd countered that the 1960 version was in the public domain through publication. Judge Lowe dusted off the Rosette v. Rainbow Records decision and updated it to make it work in the post-1976 Copyright Act environment, the only known example where this was done.

The court rejected O’Dowd’s argument, that by issuing the 1960 recording of “Handy Man”, Jones and Blackwell published the composition. The court rejected this argument on the grounds that a phonorecord could not be a copy of the composition it contained. Instead, the court folded the 1976 Copyright Act into the Rosette decision and used the 1984 date, in which Jones and Blackwell registered the song as a “basic musical work” (PA/PAU), as the earliest date in which they could seek damages. The court then applied Judge Gurfein’s “split the baby” solution stating that distributing pre-1972 records didn’t publish them, and thus didn’t divest them of whatever copyrights they held. Until the owner sought copyright, he could not stop infringers nor seek damages.

The modernized interpretation of the formula was that issuing the 1960 version of “Handy Man” as a record didn’t publish it, but when Jones and Blackwell filed their PA/PAU registration on the phonorecord in 1984, they then became entitled to seek royalties and enforce penalties for infringement. Had they filed a Form E and submitted sheet music the same thing would have happened, but after the 1976 Act there was no reason to prefer sheet music over the submittal of a cassette tape and a PA/PAU form—the latter protected both the composition and the specific sound recording as a unity.

To be continued…