www.billboard.com: A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says musicians can enforce U.S. copyright termination rules across the globe, adopting a novel legal theory that record labels and publishers have warned will disrupt “a half-century of settled industry norms.”
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I was really excited to read this article, but unfortunately it was behind a paywall. Maybe CMU has access to billboard.com, but I was unable to access the article. Instead, I looked into the premise. I learned that a week ago, on January 12th, a federal appeals court ruled that songwriters can reclaim their songs globally, instead of solely in the US. A songwriter, Cyril Vetter, came out with the song Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love) in 1963. He terminated his contract with Resnik Music Group, but only regained U.S. rights to the song. The US Copyright Act says that Vetter’s termination would result in him regaining all of his rights.
I’d recommend everyone interested read the article on musicbusinessworldwide, because it showed truly how complicated the decision was to make. Vetter co-wrote the song, but his co-writer passed away, meaning 50% of the song was owned by his co-writer's heirs. The multiple interpretations given through this ruling each bring up their own points.
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