In an interesting ruling, a British court has apparently ruled that Pink Floyd can enforce a clause in their contract to prevent their record company, EMI from selling individual tracks apart from the whole album.
As part of a broader lawsuit over royalty payments, Andrew Morritt, chancellor of the U.K. High Court, ruled Thursday that Pink Floyd’s 1999 contract with its record label, EMI Group Ltd., prohibits EMI from selling the band’s work in any configuration other than the original without the band’s permission. The contract dates from before the advent of digital music, when the arrival of online music retailers like Apple Inc.’s iTunes gave consumers the ability to pluck individual tracks without buying the whole album.
EMI argued in court this week that the 1999 contract language only applied to physical albums or CDs, not downloads. Pink Floyd’s attorneys said the band wanted its work sold online only as complete albums, not as individual tracks.
On Thursday, according to the Associated Press, Sir Andrew sided with the band and ruled that EMI is “not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd’s consent.” He ordered EMI to pay the band’s legal costs.
To a certain extent it’s reminiscent of another famous case involving artistic expression and editing by Monty Python in Gilliam v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., 538 F.2d 14 (2d Cir. 1976), in which the court held that unauthorized editing of underlying script by television network of licensed from its owner would constitute infringement of copyright in underlying work similar to any other use of work that exceeds license granted by proprietor of copyright. As a matter of contract and copyright then, there seems to be respect for context as an element of artistic integrity. It makes me wonder how far an artist might be able to take this concept. Could I mandate a particular bitrate? A file format other than mp3 that doesn’t degrade the sound quality? I don’t see why not. Could reach further down the distribution channel and dictate how the consumer listened to my music? It’s a tougher sell, but if I put a notice that listening to my album is an agreement not to listen to it on anything but Bose surround sound system why shouldn’t my artistic integrity carry the same force?
Related posts:
No Comments Yet - be the First!