- New EEOC chief data officer says machine learning algorithms may soon enable agency to predict, and deploy resources against, workplace bias before it happens [Paige Smith, Bloomberg Law]
- “The BSO, in a statement, defended its pay structure, saying that the flute and oboe are not comparable, in part because the oboe is more difficult to play and there is a larger pool of flutists.” [Geoff Edgers, Washington Post/Allentown Morning Call]
- Even they can’t comply: “The case was ironic since the commission is charged with eliminating discrimination in Pennsylvania.” [Matt Miller, PennLive, on the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s jury loss in a race discrimination complaint] “Do as they say, not as they do: employees accuse Planned Parenthood of pregnancy discrimination” [Jon Hyman]
- Fourth Circuit: maybe Title VII doesn’t create a right to swipe files from HR [Jon Hyman]
- Although libertarians support legalizing marijuana, they should not support laws that bar employers from discriminating on the basis of marijuana use [Jeffrey Miron, Cato]
- “Why do women earn less than men? Evidence from train and bus operators” [Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel via Tyler Cowen]
- Minnesota jury orders women’s football team and league to pay $20,000 to transgender applicant turned away [Mary Lynn Smith, Minneapolis Star Tribune]
Posts Tagged ‘music and musicians’
January 9 roundup
- Maker of Steinway pianos threatens legal action against owners who advertise existing instruments for sale as used Steinways if they contain other-than-factory replacement parts [Park Avenue Pianos]
- When the Securities and Exchange Commission settles with defendants, it extracts gag orders forbidding them to talk about the experience. Is it constitutional for the government to do that? [Peggy Little, New Civil Liberties Alliance/WSJ] Update: Cato is suing about this on behalf of former businessman who wants to write book about his experience in court against the SEC [Clark Neily]
- Judge preliminarily enjoins New York City ordinance requiring home-sharing platforms like AirBnB to turn over to authorities “breathtaking” volume of data about users [SDNY Blog]
- U.S. Chamber’s top ten bad lawsuits of 2018 [Faces of Lawsuit Abuse] “The Most Important Class Action Decisions of 2018 and a Quick Look at What’s to Come” [R. Locke Beatty & Laura Lange, McGuire Woods]
- “Small aircraft engines are much less reliable than automobile engines. Why? Well, they all must be FAA certified, and it’s not worth the cost to certify, say, a new model of spark plug.” [John Cochrane, who gives HIPAA and military examples too]
- “Why logos and art are sometimes blurred on reality TV shows” [Andy Dehnart, Reality Blurred, 2017]
“Rolling Stones fan accuses the band of discriminating against disabled people”
“A Rolling Stones fan has filed a complaint against the band for discriminating against disabled people,” arguing in a complaint to the New York City Department of Human Rights that although wheelchair-accessible seats are made available at various parts of MetLife stadium at different price points, the less expensive ones sold out right away, which left him with a choice only of pricey areas. And this part hurts: plaintiff Michael Boyajian, “a retired administrative law judge, argued that the Rolling Stones should be more mindful of the discrepancy, given all the band members are in their 70s.” [Rozina Sabur and Daniel Bates, Telegraph (U.K.)]
Works from 1923 finally enter public domain
“No published works have entered our public domain since 1998.” Why the drought? “Works from 1923 were set to go into the public domain in 1999, after a 75-year copyright term. But in 1998 Congress hit a two-decade pause button and extended their copyright term for 20 years, giving works published between 1923 and 1977 an expanded term of 95 years.” Works from 1923 that became publicly available this week include (silent) films Safety Last, The Ten Commandments, and Our Hospitality, various novels by P.G. Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf, musical compositions Who’s Sorry Now, Charleston, and Yes, We Have No Bananas, and Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping By Woods On a Snowy Evening.” [Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law] “And assuming Congress doesn’t interfere, more works will fall into the public domain each January from now on.” Among those in the next few years: Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica; link fixed now] Earlier here, here, and here; given shifts in public opinion, trade associations for rights holders did not attempt to pass another extension this time.
Copyright music takedowns
“Sony Music Entertainment has been forced to abandon its claim that it owned 47 seconds of video of musician James Rhodes using his own piano to play music written by Johann Sebastian Bach.” After Rhodes posted the video to Facebook, Sony sent a takedown notice saying that the performance “matches 47 seconds of audio” owned by Sony. Match-detecting algorithms have become commonplace in the copyright takedown field; in this case, Sony backed down after Rhodes’s tweet about the situation got considerable attention. [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
Sony does own the rights to the performances of important Bach interpreters such as Glenn Gould, so it is possible that a performance influenced by Gould’s would be especially likely to trip a similarity algorithm. But it gets worse. Last year an Australian music teacher named Sebastian Tomczak “posted on YouTube a 10-hour recording of white noise as an experiment” (in sound perception, not copyright practice) and “within days, the upload had five different copyright claims filed against it. All five would allow continued use of the material, the notices explained, if Tomczak allowed the upload to be “monetized,” meaning accompanied by advertisements from which the claimants would get a share.” [Joseph Bottum, Free Beacon]
And finally, from my own recent experience: a comment from a local performance group’s Facebook page about how a recording of a sing-through of Gilbert & Sullivan Utopia, Ltd. triggered a takedown based on supposed copying of an entirely different work, Rossini’s William Tell. The passage that showed too much similarity? The audience applause!
“Senate passes copyright bill to end 140-year protection for old songs”
The Senate has now unanimously passed its own version of the Music Modernization Act, a bill intended to enable clearinghouse payment by those streaming, performing, or otherwise using older musical works. Under a House-passed bill more favorable toward owners of very old material, “a song recorded in 1927 would effectively get 140 years of protection, vastly longer than the 95 years current law gives to books, movies, and other works published around the same time.” [Timothy Lee, ArsTechnica]
September 5 roundup
- Event barns booming as wedding venues, but some owners of traditional banquet halls want them to be subject to heavier regulation, as by requiring use of licensed bartenders [Stephanie Morse, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]
- Protectionism and smuggling in ancien regime France: “Before Drug Prohibition, There Was the War on Calico” [Virginia Postrel]
- Thread unpacks “Big Ag bad, family farms good” platitudes [Sarah Taber]
- “An Oklahoma judge has agreed to resign after he was accused of using his contempt powers to jail people for infractions such as leaving sunflower seeds in his courtroom and talking in court” [ABA Journal]
- Update: North Carolina gerrymandering plaintiffs back off, concede impracticality of using new maps in time for upcoming election [Robert Barnes, Washington Post, earlier]
- “Aretha Franklin Died Without a Will, Bequeathing Estate Issues To Her Heirs” [Caron/TaxProf]
July 18 roundup
- Protected class designation as departure from viewpoint neutrality: D.C. council proposal would make support for (but not opposition to) abortion a discrimination-law protected category in health care employment [Abortion Provider Non-Discrimination Amendment Act of 2017, Bill 22-0571, via Katie Glenn, Washington Examiner]
- You’ve heard of space junk, here’s statutory junk [David Schoenbrod, Cato Regulation magazine]
- “The Regulation of Language”: “countries that adopt a planned order approach to language, also do so in their law, and similarly rely on a planned order approach in their economy” [Yehonatan Givati, Journal of Law and Economics forthcoming/SSRN]
- “You typically don’t think of pizza chains as being recipients of government bailouts, but in a sense, that’s what happened here.” [Dan Lewis, Now I Know, cheese promotion]
- Federal judge in Southern District of Mississippi wants race and gender hiring set-asides for legal work in receivership case, which is not fair to victims of Ponzi scheme whose interests are under care [Scott Greenfield]
- Trademark claims on “Ruby Tuesday,” who can hang a name on you? [Timothy Geigner, TechDirt]
“‘Dancing Baby’ lawsuit finally settles, baby is now a middle-school student”
“Universal Music Publishing Group has finally settled its copyright lawsuit involving Stephanie Lenz, the woman who posted a short video of her son dancing to a Prince song in 2007.” [Cyrus Farivar, ArsTechnica, earlier]
Prince’s family suing Walgreens, hospital re: overdose death
“Prince’s heirs have sued Walgreens and the Illinois hospital that treated the music superstar after he suffered from an opioid overdose, alleging that a doctor and various pharmacists failed to provide Prince with reasonable care, contributing to his death.” [Amy Forliti, AP/St. Paul Pioneer-Press]