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French copyright bill diluted
An amendment to the French copyright bill now means that copyright holders will be able to set
compatibility restrictions that determine which systems can play their music. Under the new
proposals Apple, Microsoft and Sony could still be made to share their proprietary copy-protection
systems if the copyright holder's restrictions are not adhered to or obeyed.
BBC News 22/06/06
Billy Bragg warns others on MySpace
UK singer/songwriter Billy Bragg was concerned when he read the small print for community website
MySpace's Proprietary Rights In Content clause. He interprets the wording as meaning that while an
artist's work is on MySpace the website can use it as it wishes, free of charge. Billy Bragg has gone
to great lengths during his career to retain ownership of his own recordings and is not prepared to
give anyone the right to exploit his material in any way. With this in mind Mr Bragg decided to
remove his material from the website until the issue is clarified. He urges other artists to hold on to
the rights for their music and for MySpace to make clear that the material posted on the site belongs
to the artists and that the website will not exploit their work in any way, if this is the case.
Music Week 24/06/06
Warner forms deal with China Unicom
Warner Music has signed a deal, expected to be announced today, with Chinese mobile phone
operator, China Unicom. Warner will sell music to Chinese wireless users, which could hopefully lead
to profitable distribution of music in a market dominated by piracy. China Unicom has 130m
customers and is the second largest operator in the country.
Financial Times 20/06/06
JASRAC data shows rise in download revenues
JASRAC, the Japanese authors' rights society, has released data showing revenues from full-song
downloads have risen 214% in 2005/06. Sales of full-song downloads for the year to March 31
reached ¥1.2bn, but did not include sales from Apple's iTunes Music Store. JASRAC has been unable
to collect any iTunes royalties due to a lack of compatibility between its database and that of iTunes
in the US, resulting in songwriters and publishers not receiving any payments from works sold in
iTunes Japan. JASRAC's copyright fee collections from all sectors rose 2.6% to ¥113.6bn for the last
12 months. Mechanical royalties rose 0.2% to ¥44.3bn and royalties from master ringtones grew
220.1% to ¥1.8bn. Collections from polyphonic ringtones fell 21.5% to ¥6.2bn, while performance
right royalties for the year rose 7.2% to ¥48.3bn.
Billboard 17/06/06
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