MediaNet Sued for Licensing Unlicensed Songs

New submitter duSoliel wrote in with news that another musician is complaining about a lack of royalties from streaming music services. This time, however, the musician is going after MediaNet (once known as MusicNet) which acts as an intermediary source for licensing songs to streaming music services that did not manage to gain compulsory licensing from the Copyright Royalty Board. MediaNet has a storied history riddled with lawsuits from the Harry Fox agency among others; a suit brought last year alleged that around a quarter of MediaNet's catalog was improperly licensed, but was settled privately out of court. Now, Aimee Mann is suing them for failure to properly license 120 of her songs, seeking $18 million in damages. From the article: "... she entered into a license agreement in 2003 with MediaNet (then known as MusicNet). The term of the license agreement was scheduled to end in 2006 but had automatic two-year extensions unless terminated by either party. Mann's representative is said to have sent a termination notice in 2005, but nevertheless, 'MediaNet continued after the Termination Date to transmit, perform, reproduce and distribute the Compositions as part of MediaNet's service, despite having no right or license to do so.' ... Besides suing for direct infringement, Mann is also claiming that MediaNet induced its business partners to commit copyright infringement. Mann also says she has not been paid any royalties by the company since Sept. 30, 2005 with the exception of a $20 advance this past March that was returned." The perils of not having sane compulsory licensing for Internet radio?

Comments

lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, the perils of having copyright at all?

Re:lol

[hairyfeet]

I'm sorry but copyrights as designed by the founding fathers was a GOOD thing, it allowed the little guy to make enough to live on while keeping the large cartels from just snatching everything that wasn't nailed down. what we have now is the exact opposite, a system which favors those very same cartels and screws the little guy, just look at the "standard record contract" which is just a damned joke its pathetic to see how badly things have been tilted towards the cartels.

So what we need is NOT to abolish it but reform it, starting with putting copyright terms back to the original 25 years so that the cartels can't lock down our history behind paywalls, remove the ability to sell your copyrights, if the cartels want to lease the rights that is fine but what has happened is the record contracts now force the artist to give away their songs just to be heard so the ability to take someone's copyrights away should be removed, and once the copyright term is up the formerly copyrighted work shall be put in a large repository on the web free for all to use to enjoy and create more art.

If we were to do this frankly copyrights wouldn't be something everybody bitched about anymore, why you'd have all the great music of the first 80 years of the twentieth century to use in new projects, the artists wouldn't be forced to sign everything away, and the cartels wouldn't have our entire recorded history locked behind paywalls, it would be great.

Sadly our system is so corrupted and ruined by big money that I truly believe that only a total collapse will bring about any chance for change so until then I say until We, The People get a seat at the negotiating table you should treat copyright laws as what they are, laws bought with bribes and therefor null and void. Does ANYBODY believe the people would have voted for 150+ year copyrights? Or that copyrights would last nearly a century after the creator of the work has died? Of course not but the people didn't get a say, the cartels, especially Disney, just broke out their checkbook and bribed their way into having the laws changed. This is why they should be ignored, as unjust laws that came to be through illegal acts are crimes and should be treated as such.

Where is the burden of proof?

[Stolpskott]

"Mann's representative is said to have sent a termination notice in 2005"

I am assuming that Mann's representative sent the termination notice in some way that requires notarized acceptance that is recorded (in other words, someone at MediaNet had to sign to say that the notice had been received) and that the receipt notification was returned to Mann's representative, who kept the original and can produce it on demand.

If not, MediaNet will probably say "hmm, we have no record of it, looks like it got lost in the mail", with probably little or no paper/electronic trail to contradict that, aside from them collecting royalties on the playlist and not distributing that to the artist.

So it could be a copyright infringement case or a non-payment of contract issue (the latter being a distinctly smaller payout, I would guess).

Re:Where is the burden of proof?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it still would have expired in 2008. Also, they'll have a very hard time convincing an unbiased judge that they happen to randomly stop paying her at the same time as the notice was sent.

Re:Where is the burden of proof?

[Desler]

If not, MediaNet will probably say "hmm, we have no record of it, looks like it got lost in the mail", with probably little or no paper/electronic trail to contradict that, aside from them collecting royalties on the playlist and not distributing that to the artist.

No, they have a clear paper trail of emails between them and MusicNet. It's in their complaint. Yeah, yeah. You didn't RTFA.

Re:What are the damages?

[Sockatume]

Here's what'll happen: MediaNet will find a way to press the case on and on beyond the plaintiff's resources, and will then settle for a bit more than the $20/month the plaintiff would've been getting, with a confidentiality agreement.

'Cause that's how law works when it's corporations versus individuals. Equal, but not egalitarian.

Re:What are the damages?

[Desler]

It's going to be quite hard to weasel out of the fact that they conveniently stopped paying her royalties right after date that the termination notice was sent as documented in the complaint and yet claim at the same time that they never received such a notice.