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The rights to the 1978 song “Y.M.C.A.” generate a million dollars a year, even after all this time. But that money doesn’t go to the Village People, who performed the original recording, or the songwriters.
Victor Willis, the original lead singer of the group, filed papers this year to regain control in 2013 over his share of “Y.M.C.A.,” whose lyrics he wrote, under a copyright provision that returns ownership of creative works to recording artists and songwriters after 35 years. His claim to “Y.M.C.A.” and 32 other Village People compositions, however, is being contested by two companies that administer publishing rights to the songs.
The companies, Scorpio Music, a French business, and Can’t Stop Productions, one of its American affiliates, do not deny that Mr. Willis, who dressed as a police or naval officer in the group’s live performances, is one of the writers of several of the songs, which have made many millions of dollars. But they have asked a court in Los Angeles to deny his attempt to exercise what are known as “termination rights,” arguing, among other things, that the two companies “employed defendant Willis as a writer for hire, and he therefore has no rights” to any share of ownership of the songs.
The defense said Willis was merely one of several creators of the songs, and in some cases only translated French songs. A lawyer for the plaintiff pointed out that Mr. Willis does not speak French and that France has no Y.M.C.A.s. Link -via Breakfast Links
In a story we brought you last week, a monkey grabbed photographer David Slater’s camera and took several pictures, including this one of himself. This picture doesn’t have a copyright notice, but two other pictures at Mail Online have a watermark from Caters News Agency. Techdirt finds that a little strange.
So here’s the legal question: how did the copyright get assigned to Caters? I can’t see how there’s been a legal transfer. The monkeys were unlikely to have sold or licensed the work. I’m assuming that it’s likely that the photographer, Slater, probably submitted the photos to the agency, and from a common sense view of things, that would make perfect sense. But from a letter-of-the-law view of things, Slater almost certainly does not hold the copyrights on those images, and has no legal right to then sell, license or assign them to Caters.
I don’t think anyone is worrying about the monkey filing an infringement suit, but it is an interesting question. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
Update: Caters News Agency contacted Techdirt, and asked them to take down the two pictures. Someone in the comments offered to pay for the monkey pictures with a picture of a spider. Link -Thanks, wernerna!
(Image credit: an unnamed Indonesian Macaque)
YouTube took the original Nyan Cat video down, and in its place there is a notice that “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by PRguitarman.” However, PRguitarman says he did not file a copyright claim. He is having trouble straightening this out.
Funny how someone can easily make a complaint but to actually prove it the owner has to jump through all of these hoops. FUN TIMES! But seriously, there is a lot of work involved here and it’s pretty stressful.
Meanwhile, people are flagging my videos on Youtube and giving me death threats just like upstanding Internet citizens usually do. Good job.
Anyway, I’ve been working at this for about two or three hours and have done the most I can for now. Saraj00n, Daniwell, and Youtube have been contacted and I am just now waiting for each of their replies so we can work on getting the video back up.
The cat is still available in the original .gif format at his site. Link -via The Daily What
What do you do if you are a member of a band and someone keeps sending you emails claiming to the the artist known as Banksy, and asking you to change the name of your band? That actually happened to the band Exit Throught the Gift Shop. The emails were from Banksy! The artist hoped to convince the band to change their name in order to prevent confusion with his movie of the same title, and offered original artwork as an incentive.
It turned out that the mystery man was the elusive graffiti artist and the band agreed to change their name.
They have now rebranded themselves as Brace Yourself.
Keeping his promise, Banksy then sent a huge painting to his home featuring a black and white Grim Reaper driving a dodgem car.
The Banksy painting has been valued at £200,000 but the band plan to display it at a gallery rather than sell it.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by 
With all of the confusion recently on the internet about music and copyright, you may not know what’s what. Here’s something to help you learn about how music royalties work.
Considering how much “education” about music and copyright is out there (”downloading music is stealing!” ads and the like), most people have no idea how it actually works in terms of who owns what and who should get money from what kind of use. And lately, with issues like confusion over Pandora royalties, songwriters trying to collect royalties from blogs that post YouTube videos, and even arguments that video games may constitute a public performance of music, it’s just been getting increasingly complicated.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by 
Photo: our_bangladesh [Flickr]
It took almost 20 years for the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to build the Taj Mahal in the 1600s, but it took only 5 years for wealthy movie director Ahsanullah Moni to build his replica near Dhaka, Bangladesh:
He has imported marble and granite from Italy, diamonds from Belgium and used 160kg of bronze for the dome.
In support of his project, he said: "Everyone dreams about seeing the Taj Mahal but very few Bangladeshis can make the trip because it’s too expensive for them."
The Indians, however aren’t amused and are thinking of suing Moni for copyright infringement: Link | Reuter has the video – via Oddly Enough, Thanks Robert Basler !
