p2p news / p2pnet: A running battle between Billy Bragg and Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace has forced MySpace to change a policy which affected artists.

Bragg had angrily pulled his music from MySpace because the site’s terms and conditions more or less claimed complete ownership of the material.

Now, "MySpace.com does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, ‘Content’) that you post to the MySpace Services," it states.

"I am very pleased to see that MySpace have changed their terms of agreement from a declaration of their rights into a declaration of our rights as artists, making it clear that, as creators, we retain ownership of our material," Bragg states on his blog, going on:

"Having been adopted by the biggest social networking site on the block, I hope their recognition of the right of the artist to be sole exploiter of their own material now becomes an industry standard because there is much more at stake here than just the terms and conditions of a website.

"In the past, songwriters and performers needed a record company to manufacture, market and distribute their work, and in exchange for that, the company expected to own the rights to exploit the recordings for as long as the material was capable of earning royalties - life of copyright in legalese which currently means 50 years.

"Ive always had a problem with that arrangement, arguing that the recordings Ive made should provide my pension not that of some record company executive. In order to achieve this, I have held on to my rights, signing licensing deals in which ownership of the records reverts to me after a stipulated period,

usually ten years. I figure that if a company cant make their money back after that time, they dont deserve to put out my records anyway.

"Every few years, the reversion clause kicks in, my back catalogue returns to my ownership and I begin the licensing process all over again. Not only does this strengthen my hand in contract negotiations, it also allows me to take account of new technologies in a rapidly changing industry.

"Now that the popularity of downloading has made physical manufacturing and distribution no longer necessary, the next generation of artists will not need to surrender all of their rights in order to get their music into the marketplace. It is therefore crucial that they understand, from the moment that they first post music on the internet, the importance of retaining their long term right to exploit the material that they create. This is doubly important on a networking site where many of the songs posted will be by unsigned artists. Ownership of the rights to such material is somewhat ambiguous. Thats why I hope that the groundbreaking decision of MySpace to come down on the side of the artists rights will be followed throughout the industry.

"I also welcome the new wording of the terms and conditions in which MySpace clarify exactly why they require specific rights and how they intend to use them. Again, I hope more sites follow the lead of MySpace in ensuring the use of clear and transparent language in contracts. The last thing any of us wants to see is a situation in which everyone posting a song on the site has to have a lawyer sitting next to them.

"Im glad my music is available to the community again and Im glad that MySpace chose to act on my concerns. In order that we might avoid any such confusion in future, can I suggest that MySpace notify its members of any changes in the terms and conditions whenever they take place."

[NOTE - Anyone who’s interested in this will also be interested in Neil Leyton’s Paris TACD conference write-up: Jon]

Also See:
blog - PLEASE LET EVERYONE KNOW THAT MYSPACE IS SAFE AGAIN!, June 26, 2006
Neil Leyton - Paris TACD conference, June 29, 2006

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win - Mohandas Gandhi

This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2006 at 8:34 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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