Don Henley sues Senate Candidate

Don Henley, of The Eagles, is suing Republican Senate candidate Charles DeVore for using parody's of Henley's songs "The Boys of Summer" and "All She Wants to Do is Danoce" in two campaign videos without permission. DeVore has responded saying that the use is within his first amendment freedom of political speech. You can read the article here.

Comment: It is likely DeVore will prevail because parody is allowed as fair use under the US Copyright act.

Record Store Day a Success!

Billboard is reporting that this past weekend's 2nd Annual Record Store Day was a success with greater traffic and sales numbers than last years event. Record Store Day, the annual event which was created to promote independent record stores, celebrated its 2nd year on April 18, 2009 by offering 82 exclusive releases (cds, vinyl, and dvds) only available at independent record stores. You can read the article about its success here.

Priate Bay Founders Found Guilty

The four founders of the BitTorrent Site, Pirate Bay, have been found guilty in Sweden of promoting copyright infringement. They have each been sentenced to one year in prison and must pay a fine of $3.5 million. This verdict appears to have lead to thousands of people protesting in Sweden. The decision is controversial because Pirate Bay does not actually host an infringing material, it only indexes where material can be found. The U.K. paper the Telegraph has a detailed article on the legal implications of this decision.


Video of Pirate Bay founder speaking on verdict:

New Ticket Resell Law Proposed

From Punknews.org: "Senator Charles E. Schumer has introduced legislation to specifically target ticket scalping as well as ticket resellers like TicketNow. The bill would require a two-day waiting period from when tickets go on sale before a ticket reseller can buy those tickets to put on the secondary market,

The purpose of the bill is to enable fans to get tickets at face value before ticket resellers (like the Ticketmaster-owned TicketsNow) can set up auctions to increase the price of those tickets. The issue was brought to the forefront by Bruce Springsteen and U2 but many bands have seen tickets selling for very significant amounts. When the Mighty Mighty Bosstones reunited in 2007, the band saw tickets for their shows selling for as much as $1250.00."

Check out a more in-depth article about it here.

Coldplay: Copycats or Just Pretentious?

The battle over Coldplay's song "Viva La Vida" continues with charges from Joe Satriani that Coldplay copied his 2004 song "If I Could Fly". Coldplay filed a response to Satriani's copyright infringement suit with the court saying that they could not have copied the song because Satriani's song "lacks the originality" needed to be given copyright protection. Check out an article on it here.

Note: In order for something to receive copyright protection it must be an original work of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. If one cannot show that their work is 1) a work of authorship that is 2) original and 3) fixed in a tangible medium, then that work will not receive copyright protection.

Music Videos Back on Mtv

From Punknews.org: "MTV is currently launching a program called AMTV which will feature music videos between 3am and 9am. The network, which began in primordial times in this fashion, later changed their focus to reality TV and are currently best known for shows like The Hills, My Super Sweet 16, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, and Paris Hilton's My New BFF.

According to the NY Times report, the network is also bringing back “Unplugged,” its series of acoustic performances by artists. Critics of MTV say that its music brand is all but irrelevant now, since countless music videos and songs are only a click away on YouTube and other Web sites. The network canceled “TRL,” its long-running video countdown, last fall after years of sagging ratings."

Wal-Mart is the new Ticketmaster

According to this article, Wal-mart will begin selling concert tickets.