Industry Liabilities

In this blog I have to discuss three different liabilities or one liability that has happened multiple times in my chosen industry.  Today I am choosing to do one liability that has happened multiple times Copyright infringement.

The first liability that I want to talk about is the copyright infringement case that I found with Waves Audio.  If you don’t know Waves Audio makes plug-ins and other software to help in the mixing and editing process of audio.  In this case two NYC studios are being sued over the use of cracked software.  One studio has already admitted to using cracked software and vowed to make sure that their studio would be 100% free of cracked software.  That studio is Quad Recording studio Inc.

            
The second studio in this liability case is going with the defense that they didn’t know that one or more of their employees, engineers, or contract workers were using cracked software.  But according to the Honorable James C. Francis IV, United Sates Magistrate Judge for the Southern Federal District Court of New York, instructed the Jury, “a person is liable for copyright infringement by another if the person has a financial interest and the right and ability to supervise the infringing activity, whether or not the person knew of the infringement.”  This statement by the judge goes to show that Skyline recording studios is still liable for their employees actions weather or not they knew they were using them or not.

Next up in the list of copyright infringement we have the case of “Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. UMG Recordings” in this case UMG Recordings used parts of the plaintiff’s song, but argued that the pieces were so small that it was to insignificant “and therefore unprotect able in the first place.”   The complaining party is George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog” and the defending party Public Announcement’s “D.O.G. In Me” The musical pieces in question are the spoken word “bow” that periodically punctuates, the sound that is called “rhythmic” panting, and use of the phrase “Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yea."

Upholding a jury’s finding of infringement, the appeals court applied the four determinants of “fair use” to the facts of this case and concluded the defendants’ use of the snippets from the existing George Clinton song did not constitute an “homage” that fell within the purview of “fair use.” So the defendant won the case on the use of fair act.  But later the ruling was appealed and the court found that it was not fair use at all and the defendant lost over all.

 The third copyright liability I want to talk about is Warner Music Group v. Fullscreen Inc.  Warner Music Group claims that Fullscreen was promoting music videos without paying royalties.  Fullscreen is a multichannel company that operates thousands of YouTube channels, with content that is comprised mainly of cover songs according to Warner Music Group.  A settlement was reached between both companies.  Fullscreen agreed that they will pay for licenses to show the videos and if not then they would have to remove the music videos for the licenses that they did not own to certain music videos.

With all three of these copyright infringement liabilities covered.  These give me a good idea of what not to do.  I learned that even though you have cracked software its probably best that you do not use any of it in the aspect of making money from someone else when you do not own the rights to use the software from a different company.  The other two liabilities have been covered multiple times throughout my undergraduate degree.  There is no real use of “fair us” when it comes to making money or content.  If you have to use someone else’s work in your own work but you didn’t pay that person for that piece or pieces then you will get sued for copyright infringement no matter the size of the audio file in question.  Last posting music videos, this article and lawsuit helped me understand that no matter what the content is you must have a license to use other peoples work on your own website or YouTube Channel.  As an Audio Production Studio all these different types of Copyright infringement liabilities can definitely happen and I will be on my best behavior when conducting business and training my employees not to do illegal activities that could hurt the company overall.