The renewal will see both organizations deepen their longstanding strategic partnership. Both organizations will “drive the creation of music value and enhance the music experience for TME’s users.” Merlin will also license into TME’s new social music community, WeSing.
Source: Tencent Music Just Expanded Its Merlin Indie Licensing Deal
A company operating a YouTube-ripping platform has sued the RIAA for sending “abusive” DMCA anti-circumvention notices to Google. According to the complaint and contrary to the RIAA’s claims, the Yout service does not “descramble, decrypt, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair” YouTube’s rolling cipher technology.
Source: RIAA Sued By YouTube-Ripping Site Over DMCA Anti-Circumvention Notices * TorrentFreak
A group of musicians has launched a new campaign, called Justice At Spotify, to try to gain support for a series of changes they would like to see the world’s largest streaming service make. Along with a mission statement and a petition that at press time has been signed by more than 6,000 people.
Source: ‘Justice At Spotify’ Campaign Calls for Increased Royalty Rates, More Transparency
Source: Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook
Pro Music Rights has settled its massive collusion suit with Connoisseur Media months after reaching agreements with iHeartMedia and Napster. The performance rights organization first submitted the 120-page-long complaint in March of this year, naming Apple, Amazon, Google, Spotify, and an array of other prominent music-industry companies as defendants.
Source: Pro Music Rights Settles Streaming Collusion Suit with Connoisseur Media
Twitch, the rapidly growing livestreaming platform, and its owner Amazon received a blistering letter on Thursday signed by multiple major U.S. music organizations including the RIAA, the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Music Managers Forum, the American Association of Independent Music, SAG-AFTRA and more than a dozen others over its lack of licensing deals with many major music rights-holders.
Amazon-owned live streaming platform Twitch has been hit with “thousands” of DMCA infringement notifications over copyrighted music used in videos. Hundreds of Twitch partners have received emails from the platform notifying them that copyrighted music has been used in clips posted on their channels and that those videos have now been deleted.
Source: Twitch copyright headache gets worse as ‘thousands’ of videos get deleted over infringement notices
A large number of Twitch users have had their videos deleted following a new round of mass DMCA notice processing. Twitch has also imposed an interesting ‘deal’ on those affected. In exchange for removing their ability to file a counternotice, Twitch won’t be placing a copyright ‘strike’ against users’ accounts. A fair ‘amnesty’ deal or a coach-and-horses through due process?
Source: Twitch DMCA “Bloodbath” Trades Copyright Strikes For Due Process * TorrentFreak
Even if the artists don’t own the boards they painted on, shopkeepers don’t necessarily have the right to chop up the murals. The Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) that was passed in 1990 gives artists rights to protect their work. It is intended to prevent the intentional destruction, distortion, or mutilation of works of art. Under the law, artists have the right to claim their work and must be given 90 days’ notice to take it down before it can be destroyed.
Source: Protest art leaves the streets
What’s being called a landmark agreement between Springer Nature and the Max Planck Digital Library is being announced today (October 20) from Springer in London as creating “a route to open access” for Nature research journals. The agreement newly in place is intended to “deliver the first ever transformative agreement for Nature and Nature-branded journals.”
Source: Springer Nature and Max Planck Partner on Transformative Agreement