Steal this book? There’s a price — This op-ed from the New York Times details the costs of book piracy, not just in economic terms, but in cultural terms. “We have surrendered our lives to technocrat billionaires who once upon a time set out to do no harm & have instead ended up destroying the world as we knew it. Convenience & the lowest possible price, or no price at all, have become our defining values.”
Mechanical Licensing Collective Requests Over $37 Million for 2021 Launch — The Music Modernization Act called for the creation of a new entity to administer and distribute royalties for the mechanical reproduction of songs by digital services. In July, the US Copyright Office designated the entity to carry out those functions, and now the process of figuring out what everything costs (and who will pay for it) has begun.
Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway’ Copyright Battle, Explained — A thorough look (with links to the actual court filings!) at the copyright infringement case involving Stairway to Heaven. Oral arguments for an en banc rehearing in the Ninth Circuit are scheduled for Monday.
Deezer plans to experiment user-centric payment model — Emmanuel Legrand reports that the music streaming service may become the first to adopt a fairer royalty payout model.
The Constitution, Annotated: The Constitution Explained in Plain English — Finally, this week was National Constitution Day, so be sure to check out this wonderful online resource to see how the founding document’s various provisions have been interpreted by courts over the past two centuries. Maybe check out, oh I don’t know, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.