Women in Music and the Copyright Society announced today that they will be co-hosting a panel on the Music Modernization Act on July 30, 2019. This panel is timely given the Copyright Office's official designation as of July 8 appointing Mechanical Licensing Collective, Inc. as the first mechanical licensing collective (“MLC”) to administer the new blanket-licensing system for the reproduction and distribution of musical works embodied in digital phonorecord deliveries, and Digital Licensee Coordinator, Inc. as the first digital licensee coordinator (“DLC”) representing the digital music services, which will play an integral role in this new system created by the Music Modernization Act.
On October 11, 2018, the Orrin G. Hatch–Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act (“MMA”) was enacted by Congress and marked the most significant change to the Copyright Act in decades. Its creation and final passage—a testament to collaboration and forward thinking—was spurred by many influential women in the music industry and in government. Title I of the MMA sets out an ambitious new system to streamline the licensing of musical compositions used by digital music services by eliminating the song-by-song clearance process of the past and building a framework to harness big data to match musicians to sound recordings to efficiently and effectively distribute royalty payments to creators. Among other key changes to the music licensing system overall, the MMA includes changes making pre-1972 sound recordings subject to certain federal copyright protections and exceptions (e.g., statutory licensing for non-interactive streaming, statutory damages for unauthorized use, online safe harbors under section 512) and changes codifying rights for music producers and other creative contributors to sound recordings to receive a share of statutory royalty payments from SoundExchange pursuant to letters of direction.
The July 30 panel and luncheon will discuss the development and passage of the MMA, what practical benefits the MMA will have for music copyright owners and digital services, and how the MMA will be implemented moving forward.
The panel's participants include:
Danielle Aguirre, EVP & GC of NMPA and Mechanical Licensing Collective Board Member
Jacqueline Charlesworth, Partner at Alter, Kendrick & Baron, LLP and former GC of the U.S. Copyright Office
Sally Rose Larson, Deputy Chief of Staff for Representative Doug Collins' Office
Julia Massimino, VP of Public Policy at SoundExchange
Representative of the Digital Licensee Coordinator, Invited/Pending
The panel will take place at the Washington, DC office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP from 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm on July 30, 2019.
