How Does the Sale of Music Rights Change Copyright Litigation?
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Jacob Kirschenbaum, JD '23
2y ago
When confronted with instability, investors smartly flock to stable assets that can withstand the winds of economic change. Although these assets tend to be stable financial instruments like treasury bills or commodities like gold, money has recently been flowing into an even older, more human, asset that we can all appreciate: music (or more specifically, music rights).  Recently, it was announced that Bob Dylan sold his entire songwriting catalog to Universal Music Publishing Group, just a week after the world learned that Stevie Nicks sold a majority stake (80%) of her own catalog to P ..read more
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Creating a Safer Harbor Under the DMCA
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Alex Kaczmarek, LLM '22
2y ago
On December 22, 2020, Senator Thom Tillis released the first discussion draft of the Digital Copyright Act of 2021 (“DCA” or the “Act”): an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). Senator Tillis also provided a one-page summary of the background of the Act and its significant revisions to the DMCA. It is important to note that the discussion draft is just that, a platform for discussion. Senator Tillis’ significant revisions include a major change to the DMCA’s safe harbor provision in three parts. First, “lowering the specificity with which copyright owners must identify i ..read more
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Appropriation Art vs. Copyright Law: A Recent Setback for the Promotion of the Arts
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Peter Fay, JD '23
2y ago
The Second and Ninth Circuits have consistently led the way in establishing the scope of American copyright law. In the past few years, the Second Circuit in particular has had the difficult task of reconciling copyright law with appropriation art, an artistic style predicated on the intentional use of preexisting images and objects. The user alters the original works to create a new aesthetic experience and/or meaning.  While a popular and respected form of art, appropriation art’s essence – the purposeful use of preexisting works – makes it especially susceptible to claim ..read more
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NFTs In Sports Industry May Expose “Minty” Fresh Cracks in the IP Legal Landscape
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Hanna Balcha, JD '23
2y ago
Today’s digital world is evolving constantly and at extraordinary speeds. Along with these evolutions in the digital space, forms of investment and ownership are also advancing to make use of these technologies. The adoption and use of blockchain technology is spreading rapidly across various industries and the sports industry is no exception. The collection of sports cards is nothing new and to the sports enthusiast, there may not be anything more special than owning a rare, valuable collectible card–except maybe now having the ability to not only “own” a card or a still but also special “mom ..read more
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How NFTs Could Change the Music Industry – For Better or Worse
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Lindsay Harris, JD '23
2y ago
Non-fungible tokens, known colloquially as NFTs, have gained popularity due to both their scarcity and variety. NFTs can link to underlying assets that range from physical works of art to social media posts to memes. However, NFTs associated with music are especially poised to challenge traditional intellectual property rights and the future of the music industry. NFTs have been praised as a new way for artists in a music industry typically run by record labels to take back their autonomy. Musicians are generally paid negligible amounts of money from streaming services and are all but required ..read more
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Nintendo’s Actions Demonstrate Our Intellectual Property Laws are Broken
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Luciano Hamel, JD '23
2y ago
Nintendo has a love-hate relationship with some of its biggest fans. The competitive Super Smash Bros. community, a group of hardcore gamers who compete head-to-head with one another in games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Super Smash Bros. Melee, know this better than anyone. While Nintendo has waffled on its support for the Smash Bros. scene in the past, things seemed to come to a head in November 2020 when Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Tournament Organizers (TOs) of the Big House, an upcoming streamed Melee tournament, and subsequently forced them to cancel the even ..read more
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The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical: The easy permission model of Netflix should be the future for fan-created works
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by EJ Benjamin, JD '23
2y ago
Bridgerton is the Netflix television sensation that enraptured the United States in late 2020. Arriving just in time for the Christmas holiday season after a fraught election cycle and during a COVID-19 surge, Bridgerton was met with such positive reception that it quickly became a must-see series on Netflix with a premiere viewership rating that put it as the second most-watched series on the platform to date. A derivative work itself, Netflix’s Bridgerton is based on the book series by Julia Quinn, a Regency-era series set between 1813 and 1827. However, as a Shonda Rhimes production, the te ..read more
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The Ongoing Gold Rush in Music Catalog Sales
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Aaron Lichtschein, JD '23
2y ago
Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Nicks. Acclaimed musicians, iconic cultural figures and a few of the many artists who have recently sold copyright ownership in their songs. And the sums paid for such music catalog rights have been downright dizzying. The Nobel Prize-winning Dylan signed away his copyrights for nearly $400 million. Springsteen, the swashbuckling balladeer, sold his catalog for roughly $550 million. Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac fame, exchanged her copyrights for nearly $100 million. All told, roughly $5 billion was spent on catalog and rights acquisi ..read more
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Taking the Mona Lisa Effect from Illusion to Reality: Enhancing the Museum Experience with Augmented and Virtual Reality
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Sally Kang, LLM '22
2y ago
From July 2017 to April 2018, the Art Gallery of Ontario (the “AGO”) staged an exhibition titled “ReBlink,” which urged visitors to “[t]ake a second look… with a modern lens:” A collaboration between the AGO and Toronto-based digital artist Alex Mayhew, ReBlink sought to exploit cutting-edge technology to provide AGO visitors an opportunity to experience its Canadian and European Collections in an entirely new way. The technology in question was a custom mobile app which enabled visitors to use their device’s camera to “unlock Mayhew’s modern twists on historical works of art [and] see someth ..read more
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Will—and Should—VARA Cover NFTs?
NYU JIPEL - Copyright
by Alex Swanson, JD '23
2y ago
Non-fungible tokens, or “NFTs,” gained worldwide notoriety in the art world last year following the sale of Beeple’s EVERYDAYS: The First 5000 Days for a staggering $69 million at Christie’s. Increasingly, NFTs are being seen as a viable investment for art enthusiasts. As the Ethereum website opines: “If Andy Warhol had been born in the late 90s, he probably would have minted Campbell’s Soup as an NFT.” The statement is not hyperbole. Not only is there vast money to be made in creating NFTs—a recent Hiscox report found that NFT art sales have already hit $3.5 billion this year—the merging of t ..read more
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