Pols restore rights to musical artists
Clinton expected to sign bill into law
The Works Made for Hire & Copyright Corrections Act, which passed late on Thursday, sailed through the House of Representatives last month and will now make its way to the desk of President Clinton. He is expected to sign it into law.
The legislation would reverse a law that was tacked onto the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act last November, in large part because of lobbying efforts by the Recording Industry Assn. of America. The 1999 law effectively prevented musicians from petitioning their record labels for the rights to master recordings of their songs.
Several prominent artists, including Don Henley and Sheryl Crow, protested the 1999 alteration in the law, arguing that it stripped them of rights to their masters as secured in the landmark Copyright Act of 1976.
The result, says one veteran Gotham-based entertainment lawyer, is a return to the post-1976 status quo, in which artists can petition to reclaim their masters beginning in 2013, 35 years after the Copyright Act's provisions went into effect in 1978.
"It's not that artists are any better off than they were," he said. "It just puts them right back into the same position once again of having to defend their claim a few years down the road."
But that right was in dispute even before the 1999 change was added, according to a legislative source familiar with the latest round of Congressional proceedings. The record labels, as repped by the RIAA, contended that the masters are "compilations" of recordings and as such, under the Copyright Act, rightfully belong to them.
By contrast, the artists "felt that, since they had to pay recording costs and other expenses, they acted like an independent contractor rather than an employee," and therefore have the stronger claim on the master recording, the source said.
Digital delivery issue
One of the dispute's most contentious issues, he adds, is the value recording masters have for future forms of distribution, particularly digital delivery over the Internet.
"If an artist is dropped from his label a few years down the line, he may want to go to an e-music site and put his stuff on the 'Net, but all those masters would be locked up in the labels' vaults" if they are classified as works for hire, the source explained.
RIAA prexy Hilary Rosen maintains that the 1999 legislation was intended to clarify some ambiguities in the original legislation, not to deprive artists of any rights they have to their work. In the months since the 1999 law began to kick up controversy, the RIAA sat down with artists to talk through changes that would be suitable to both parties.
"We said from the beginning we did not intend to change the law and have worked diligently to assure that the issue of work for hire is resolved without prejudice to anyone's position," Rosen said.
