The Turtles continue to have salience in the music world.  Now, they also are a "happening thing" in legal circles.  Two recently published law review articles take on an interesting issue in copyright law relating to pre-1972 sound recordings that has been the subject of legal actions brought by members of The Turtles.  The articles (both of which use the song Happy Together, a Turtles favorite, in their titles) are authored by my University of Tennessee College of Law colleague, Gary Pulsinelli, and Georgetown University Law Center Professor Julie L. Ross.  

In his abstract, Gary summarizes the problem as follows:

Federal copyright law provides a digital performance right that allows owners of sound recordings to receive royalties when their works are transmitted over the Internet or via satellite radio. However, this federal protection does not extend to pre-1972 sound recordings, which are excluded from the federal copyright system and instead left to the protections of state law. No state law explicitly provides protection for any type of transmission, a situation the owners of pre-1972 sound recordings find lamentable. These owners are therefore attempting to achieve such protection by various means. . . . 

He concludes:

[S]tate law cannot provide the remedy that the owners of pre-1972 sound recordings seek. Their concerns, however, should not be dismissed. The exclusion of pre-1972 sound recordings from the federal system does deprive the owners of such recordings of royalties received by similarly situated owners whose recordings happen to have been made after that date. Because state law cannot remedy the problem, federal law must. Pre-1972 sound recordings should be brought into the federal system, on essentially the same terms as other works from the same era that are already protected by federal copyright.

Professor Ross reaches the same conclusion, as summarized in her abstract:

[G]iven the delicate balancing that has gone into Congress’ recognition of a limited digital performance right and creation of a compulsory statutory licensing system, any remedy for the inequity to owners of pre-1972 sound recordings must be left to Congress. Allowing individual courts in individual states to craft a patchwork of inconsistent remedies would disrupt the balance struck by Congress and interfere with the functioning of the compulsory license system for digital sound recording performances. This is a result that the Supremacy Clause does not permit.

Last week, I posted on federal securities law reform.  It looks like federal copyright law also is in need of some fixing . . . .  However, the copyright issue addressed in these two papers seems like an easy one to fix efficiently and effectively, unlike some of the federal securities law issues on the current reform agenda.  Regardless, I'll raise three cheers to fixing what's legally broken in the most efficacious way!

Imagine how the world could be
So very fine
So happy together . . . .