On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, June 11, 2015. Have you ever listened to film sound tracks and felt that certain portions of the music sounded familiar? You could be right. Studios may recycle film music, but they are required to make payments for the original sound track music. The American Federation of Musicians (AFM), a labor organization representing about 80,000 professional musicians in the United States and Canada, is suing several Hollywood movie studios for recycling film music without making required payments. The AFM seeks to recover damages for breach of contract including payments for the benefit [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, May 21, 2015. Cable networks HBO and Showtime won a victory for antipiracy efforts on April 30, two days before the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight. Anticipating certain websites would stream the fight for free, the fight was priced at $89 to $100 on pay-per-view, the cable companies sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) to enjoin websites from infringing their copyright of the coverage of the fight. Judge Wu granted their request, concluding that the threatened infringement would take away the cablers' right of first transmission and publication of a highly valuable live event, would [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Tuesday, May 19, 2015. After several years of litigation, music streaming service Grooveshark will settle with major music labels rather than face hundreds of millions of dollars in statutory damages at trial. The service has agreed to wipe its servers of the record companies' music, and surrender ownership of its web site, apps, and intellectual property. Perhaps due to its unapologetic stance from day one, Grooveshark was unable to transition into a successful, legitimate service. When Universal Music Group sued Grooveshark for copyright infringement four years ago, UMG presented emails from Grooveshark's executives [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Thursday, May 14, 2015. Copyright infringement is no joke, as anyone who has tried to upload a video that contains un-licensed music to YouTube can attest. Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission or infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display, or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works. To legally sample a song, a musician should seek permission for any and all copyrighted works. That is, the musician needs to obtain consent from the [...]

On behalf of The Myers Law Group posted in Copyright on Tuesday, May 12, 2015. Musicians have been sampling each others music for decades. In fact, some musicians make their living sampling from other music and creating new sounds. For example, the solo artist Girl Talk mixes elements of hip-hop and rock songs to make a completely new sound. Girl Talk's only member is engineer-turned-DJ Greg Gillis. Mr. Gillis has so far released five albums, which are offered for free on his website, and each sampling hundreds of songs. For each sample of a song he uses on his albums, Mr. Gillis has sought [...]