If you think you haven’t heard enough about Star Wars this past week (or month. year. lifetime?) then you are in luck– another story about Star Wars! While we have often discussed people taking legal action against Disney (see: Lawsuit over “Frozen” has Disney asking, “Let it go!” and Disney Finally Breaks the Ice on “Frozen”...Read More
There has been a lot of talk about modern music artists and their rights in regards to compensation from streaming services spearheaded by megastars like Taylor Swift and Ne-Y0– see T-Swizzle Takes a Big Bite of Out of Apple and Ne-Yo says No-No to Low-Low Pay of Songwriters. But what about music before the era of Beyoncé...Read More
In our last post, we introduced you to the contract as a legal document. We further discussed your Feature Actor Agreement and the parts that should be negotiated in the contract on your behalf. Now that you understand the basics of your contract and how “final” your signed contract is, let’s discuss the parts of...Read More
We’ve all heard the phrase, “Steal from the best, but make it your own.” But what exactly does this mean in copyright law? Recording artists sample work from previous recordings, painters recreate photographs, books are adapted into film. Much of what we see today with regards to creative works, we’ve seen or heard before in...Read More
(cont. from The Hollywood Lawyer blog post, “Sampling Music Part 2 of 3: How do I get permission?“) So, at this point, assuming that you now have the copyright owner (i.e., publishing company, songwriter) and/or master recording owner (i.e., record label) on the phone, it’s now time to talk money and see how much $...Read More
