By Frank Montero, CommLawBlog, June 1, 2014
[Blogmeister's Note: The following article by Frank Montero appeared in Bloomberg BNA's Telecommunications Law Resource Center. The folks at Bloomberg BNA have kindly given us permission to reprint it here.]It seems like copyright law is always trying to catch up with new technology. That's not a new phenomenon. Take the player piano and the 1908 Supreme Court case of White-Smith Music Publishing Co. v. Apollo Co., in which the high court ruled that manufacturers of music rolls for player pianos did not have to pay royalties to the composers.
The composers were understandably worried that the player piano - then a burgeoning new technology - would make sheet music (and, more importantly, the copyright royalties they earned from the sale of sheet music) obsolete. In response, Congress, in the Copyright Act of 1909, created the compulsory license, allowing anyone to copy a composer's work without permission as long as they paid a predetermined license fee.
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Neal McLain