Music Licensing and TV-DVD Releases

Ah, yes - I love the Twitter (as the kids call it). It moves with such incredible speed that it's impossible not to get an interesting tid bit every hour or so. Today's interesting bit of info comes courtesy of @erikjheels, a fellow entertainment attorney in the Boston area, who posted a link to this posting on Rick Klau's weblog. As DVDs of television shows become more and more popular, studios are scrabbling to issue every show they've ever aired in an attempt to cash in on this bottomless pit of entertainment income. MTV is no exception, and, as the blog indicates, they are currently trying to release DVD versions of Beavis and Butthead (which I've never understood...) and The State (which I loved as a wee lass).

In what is possibly the biggest irony of all ironies, MTV is being held up and has been forced to edit these programs due to a lack of music licensing rights to distribute the songs in DVD format. Seriously?? MTV?? You are (or were) "music television," were you not? Where were your lawyers when these licenses are were written and why didn't they cover uses "now known or later developed"? I've actually gotten my hands on a synchronization license for MTV's "The Real World," which basically signed over every single right to the song short of an actual assignment, for the duration of the copyright. Why, oh WHY weren't DVD releases included in these licenses? Alright, I gotta reign it in - the fact of the matter is that they weren't, and now MTV is faced with a delimma.

So how to get around this? Well, the logical solution would be to come back to the table and renegotiate these licenses, or, at least, some of the most important ones such as Marvin Gaye's music which was used in some of the most famous sketches on The State. Information on the situation is scant, and it's difficult to discern whether Gaye's estate is holding out (i.e. financially, morally or otherwise) or whether MTV is being too cheap or onerous. Therefore, I don't think that anyone is really at liberty to BLAME the copyright holder. Whatever the situation, I can't imagine why in the WORLD MTV would think it would be a good idea to take the music out of the skits. Just get rid of the skits altogether or work out the license - it's just going to piss consumers off when they by a DVD with useless and/or unfinished content on it. I mean, it's MTV we're taking about here - not some 2-bit TV station. This is going to translate to lost sales that, I would argue, may exceed the cost of the license.

It's unfortunate that licensing issues are holding up the release of some of these shows, but I do wish the public would be a little bit more understanding with regard to copyright. These owners have a right to reap the benefits of their creative endeavors; and sometimes the amount of money that entails differs between the parties, and these things take time to work out. It doesn't make either party the "bad guy" - it's simply the way things are. If anything, this is a good lesson to lawyers, showing that we need to be more anticipatory with regard to the use of content in new formats.

By the way, my twitter tag is @sjamieson. Please feel free to follow! I try to focus on a mix of entertainment and legal issues, and a few tweets here and there about my personal interests (i.e. @zombietweets).